VERDICT: Santiago, Chile is both brought into focus and dreamily abstracted in this languid city symphony featuring a queer couple looking for a space in which they can express themselves.
The camera barely stops moving in Luciana Merino and Pascal Viveros’ Towards the Sun, Far from the Center.
Looking for a way to shift the perspective on the city in which they live, the two filmmakers hit upon the notion of filming it at a remove. They captured it from a distance in high definition, and then used a digital zooming technique to concentrate on specific details. On one hand, this is the minutiae of people coming and going on a sun-drenched summer afternoon; on the other, it follows two women as they amiably traverse various parks and roads. With the audio mimicking the lens’s remoteness, rendering any dialogue as nothing more than a murmur, the result is like a city symphony re-imaged as a hypnogogic ambient album of field recordings.
Partly this is due to the unanticipated visual degradation that came as part of the zooming process. While the frame might be pushed in to centre the attention on a small area, the contents of the frame are blurred and abstracted as a result. We can still clearly make out the individual houses drafting torpidly across the screen, but the dimensions are flattened – they become textured shapes on a flattened plain. Combined with the film’s contemplative pacing, it makes for a hypnotic experience that feels of a piece with Tsai Ming Liang’s The Night in offering a peaceful urban portrait in contrast to recent political turbulence.
Popping up several times in the hazy distance are the closest things to protagonists that Merino and Viveros have inserted. The two women (played by Jimena Albarran and Fernanda Vicens) remain nameless, and their story can only be speculated about. Still, a couple of shots point to them being romantically involved and having to find some isolated corner of the landscape in which they can freely express their feelings. With them, Merino and Viveros’s camera comes to a rest, perhaps suggesting such a space was what it sought out the entire time.
Director, screenplay: Luciana Merino, Pascal Viveros
Cast: Fernanda Vicens, Jimena Albarran
Producer: Javiera Pineda
Cinematography: Pascal Viveros
Editing: Elisa Leiva
Music: Tomas Carrasco
Sound design: Camila Pruzzo, Carlos Perez
Production design:Francisco Aravena, Araceli Miranda
Venue: Berlinale (Berlinale Shorts)
No dialogue
17 minutes
