dir. Julio Medem
I'm a big fan of Julio Medem's work. I caught his last film, Tierra, at the 1997 Latino Film Festival in Sydney, and it rocketed to the top of my favourite films list, somewhere close to the Italian zombie-fantasy Dellamore Dellamorte. What I love best about these films is the elements of innocent cinema - a gleeful willingness to play with the form of cinema, to be seriously cute, curiously clever, to just dance dammit! and throw it all away.
Lovers of the Arctic Circle is colder than Medem's previous work, thematically restrained and ponderous in comparison to the spirited spontaneity of Tierra. Perhaps it is the inevitability of the action that renders the film cold and uninvigorating. From the beginning we are aware that these two kids are starcross'd lovers, a twisted pair, the same coin. The fact that their names are both palindromes is quite forced. The warm colours are noticeably washed out, with a predominance of grey-blues and muted greens. The production design is sparse, the dialogue minimal. The characters are self-absorbed and distant, their smiles slightly forced. The exception is the young Otto, played by Medem's son, Peru. Peru radiates beauty and warmth, and in his inquisitive eyes you can see the twinkle of his father's imagination - the spark of the young at heart, the world in wonder.
In a way, Medem's film celebrates how imagination, desire, dream unconsciously shapes our destiny, our fate, weaving patterns that are less coincidental than fractal, predestined, apparent at each level of existence, from the trivial to the global. Coincidence dances throught the crowd, but is the pattern of the fabric not its thread. So troubled waters are actually a pattern of calm, wave repetition a strange equilibrium.
The film skips between Ana's and Otto's perspectives as it does timelines and national boundaries - from past to present, childhood to adulthood, Spain to Finland, even Australia. There are some beautiful tracking shots in the film, playing with dissolves to achieve a fluidity in time and space. The construction is quite clever, if constrictive. It distances the viewer, encourages aesthetic appreciation, instead of emotional involvement.
Death and darkness lurk on the fringes of the film, intruding twice, each time surprising because of its understated manner. Death comes from nowhere, is matter-of-fact, so everyday, the characters refuse to believe in it. Life goes on, death is brushed away like dust, a misplaced comma - false punctuation in a polite poetry reading. And whilst I decry false resolution what Lovers of the Arctic Circle needed was a satisfying fullstop, to perform a punchy phrase, gracefully bow and skip off-stage, instead of lingering like a linguist's riddle.
eugene chew
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