Bright Future screening - review - LA DISTANCIA (The Distance) by Sergio Caballero
How do you begin to describe a film like La Distancia? Curious, bizarre, strange, peculiar? Well, rest assured that a film that reminds one of the likes of Tarkovsky and Lynch will have many curious at least…
La Distancia is a film that superficially tells the story about a robbery. Sperficially is the key adjective here, because what the individuals are stealing is relatively unimportant. The plot too is secondary. La Distancia is a conglomeration of depictions of the bizarre. Take for instance the fact that the three leading characters with magical powers who complain when they haven’t killed anyone in days. Take for instance the fact that all the characters talk through telepathy. And again, consider the fact that the tense love affair between a Japanese speaking smoking bucket and a chimney is the most “human” thing in the film.
Yes, this makes the film sound like a collage of weirdness, and indeed, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that Caballero’s work is largely disconnected from what we may call ‘conventional’ or even ‘commercial’ filmmaking. But in the end, this collage is what is rewarding. Some will even find it delightfully nightmarish, as well as surprisingly comedic. Its dry sense of humour, after all, is one of the things that is most rewarding about the film.
To put it bluntly, if this film were laid out in another meta-physical parallel, it could resemble an exhibition of modern art by an artist with a penchant absurdist Dadaism. All in all, there is little meaning in the film’s storyline, though some will find parallels between its Balkan settings and various socio political situations (as we film critics are often inclined to do). But that would be missing the point. The fun about watching a film by a filmmaker like Caballero is that it is all about impulsiveness. In a recent interview that I did with him, he even revealed to me that he writes his screenplays on his iPhone. Whenever something pops into his head, he types it down.
However, while this may point out at a sparse approach, nothing could be further from the truth. As the landscape attentive photography and the precise sound recording work goes to show, this film is not the storytelling time, but it serves as an experience – an alternative experience for any viewer who is willing to sit and be carried away by its unusual composition. La Distancia is a film full of meaning, yet meaningless to the eyes of the beholder if viewed through the eyes of the characters – which in cinema sounds like a total paradox. But because cinema is a paradox where creativeness should be promoted, experiencing such a compact impulsiveness is a rare thing and works a charm here.
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