Mario Z / Chile / 1h28
Synopsis
From around 1955 to 2009, a house in a province of Santiago was used as a place of creation and, apart from welcoming the family that lived there, functioned as a free dance and theatre school. This film deals with the story of this Casa between 1935 and today.
Here is our selection’s craziest documentary… Or is it?
Very positive aspects
« Casa » mixes several codes. Of course, there are the customary archives (photos, posters, press excerpts) and a narration that brings a bit of context and history (here only in the form of text on screen). But the film takes 20 minutes to come to concrete facts about the house and the protagonists, because other components are included: illustrations (visual as well as audible) recorded for the occasion, snippets of preexisting works (TV and cinema), medias, smartphone screenshots… anything that could match. The “house” theme hovers via various hints: pets or animals you’d meet indoors (dogs, tortoise, spider, fly), a few plants, external points of view from the street— and sometimes mises en abyme (house within the house, audio comment).
Mario Z’s feat is, all things considered, to treat a quite common subject with so much personality. The editing for instance plays with effects in the Windows Movie Maker style, which could be kitsch, but they’re so over-the-top and wisely integrated that they finally work in this madness. The colours-or-black-&-white treatment with VHS aesthetics is a big plus. This colourful imagery upon dance classes footages kinda reminds of « Suspiria », whose remake is by the way directly quoted. [and for us it evokes another Chilean flick selected in the Experimental category, which by a funny chance also plays a sequence in reverse right in the middle of the film— see our review for Cataldo’s « Benjamim Zambraia and the Self-Panoptic »]
As we go along, some images we can’t understand right away surprise us with one or several meanings in hindsight. We also like the irony that thwarts a few gratuitous things: humour is present through the intervention of notes on screen (« synch/not synch », « Sorry », the Copyright mentions…) that brazenly give advice or subliminal messages, establishing a complicity with the viewer.
But the sound-design must be our favourite point. You’ll find here a very sensory experience with sonorities and effects (for example the scene with the crrreakkking doorsss), plus an excellent music (mix of acoustic, electro and programming, sometimes voices) really put in the front.
What we like less
Amongst this profusion of propositions, as the meaning isn’t always obvious, certain elements will remain irrelevant enigmas for your mind. Like this foot crushing something unappetising in a close-up… and coming back after the end credits… meh.
The structure gives false hopes. A certain logic appears, but is finally not strictly followed: the picture of the hung ballet shoes, a little nearer every time, seems to open time-related chapters; but the one that would launch the 90s decade starts with the 1989 year, and the 2000s are barely mentioned… It must be said that ping-ponging with material from 2020/2021 (including contemporary allusions probably more spontaneous than written) is double-edged.
In the minor flaws, we could point out a couple of massive paragraphs among the texts. And the camera movements look jerky (offhandedly exported video file?).
Still debating about…!
All in all, it is a little long for what it tells. But otherwise the experience wouldn’t have been the same, we guess.
It’s especially the 10 last minutes that divide opinion. Some of us think the feature should have ended with the musical duo’s last performance after the story of the « Casa »: it would’ve rounded everything off (as this scene reminds the opening). But then occurs a new chronology, starting with May and abruptly finishing on August (when you know the flick was created from May to July 2021, it makes sense). The story itself ended, but that ultimate part tries to incorporate the creation of the film that relates it. Shrewd epilogue having its place within the speech, or unnecessary catch-all of effects and material the director could not use earlier? The audience will judge.
Conclusion
A lot of experimentations, nay self-mockery, for an atypical documentary, dusty and inventive.
S.I.
« Casa » joins official selection for the Little Croco Festival’s first edition, nominated in the Documentary category.
Trailer:
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