Oswaldo Reynoso’s The Innocents was original published in the 1960s.
German Tejada’s revision of that classic of Peruvian youth culture shifts the action forward into the present but submerges the film through with a punk aesthetic of underground gigs, hand-scrawled posters, and adolescent rebellion that mean its setting is somewhat mutable. Heavily entrenched in all of this is the fourteen-year-old Cara de Angel (Diego Cruchaga Ponce de Leon) who buys into the worldview so much that scratchy zine drawings sometimes encroach onto the screen and he sees older generations as literal zombies, after a common refrain in the culture he is a key part of.
Reynoso’s original stories were branded as repugnant by conservative commentators who disliked his depictions of sexuality and gang culture arising from economic disaffection. Tejada seeks to evoke the same things, portraying a group of youths where defiant music leads the charge against the machine, while for others the best foot forward is through criminal revenge against a local predator. Cara sits at the nexus of these two groups, on one hand courting the beautiful Gabriela (Grecia Pino) and, illicitly, desiring the lead singer of a local band, Johnny (Jose Miguel Chuman). On the other hand, he also wants to prove his masculinity to the local ruffians Carambola (Fabian Haziel Calle) and El Principe (Christian Calderon) and shirk off homophobic taunts through guts and bravado.
Each of these friends and acquaintances has their own stuff to work through – from sexual hangups to power dynamics – and the reverb of an angry guitar often bristles at the edge of action as Cara struggles to contain these various emotions. It’s an impressive turn from Ponce de Leon, who must constantly present different faces to different people, swapping out the charm he shows Gabriela for the barely contained venom he shows Carambola. It’s a testament to the nuances of his performance that the audience are never convinced be either, aware that both are just masks and that the angry young man who rages at his mother for calling him “baby” is perhaps closer to the truth.
Fabian Hazeil Calle’s turn as Carambola is an equally interesting one, clearly the most physically aggressive member of the group he is – perhaps obviously to modern audience, the most insecure. He has his eyes on a girl who he doesn’t know how to talk to and would seem to be a victim of abuse that people know about but never mention. Otherwise, the characters are fairly archetypal – the assertive gang boss, the sexually fluid lead singer, the attractive and confident girlfriend. But The Innocents isn’t particularly interested in quiet complexity as tackling things face on.
This is possibly where some people will find the film a little wearing at times, and one can imagine viewers who see it as much as a punkish music video as having enough dramatic depth to have much to say. This would be a somewhat cursory reading of the film, though. Sure, there are some dream sequences and flashbacks that make apparent what might have been more effective as subtext, but they’re ultimately few and far between. Tejada does show a penchant for falling back onto thrashing music in headphones and Cara running or cycling through the Lima streets as if racing from the adulthood on the horizon or the strictures of the man, but they make sense in the context.
Tejada’s film feels like it is less about telling the story of these youngsters and more about capturing the sense Cara de Angel’s experience. He is a fourteen-year-old boy struggling with his sexuality, with his masculinity, with puberty. The Innocents does a reasonable job of depicting those struggles against a backdrop of downtrodden Lima and the youths all wrestling with similar things and – in many cases – feeling similarly disenchanted and alone as they do.
Director: German Tejada
Cast: Diego Cruchaga Ponce de Leon, Grecia Pino, Jose Miguel Chuman, Fabian Haziel Calle, Christian Calderon
Screenplay: German Tejada, Christopher Vasquez
Producers: Lorena Ugarteche, Paulina Villavicencio, Marco Antonio Salgado
Cinematography: Julian Apezteguia
Editing: Melissa Bavaro
Sound: Cesar Gonzalez Cortes
Production design: Maria Cristina Martinez
Production companies: Senor Z (Peru), Disruptiva Films, BDC Producciones (Mexico)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Midnite Xpress)
In Spanish
90 minutes
