Una noche sin luna

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Movie
Original title Una noche sin luna
Country of production Uruguay , Argentina
original language Río de la Plata Spanish
Publishing year 2014
length 78 minutes
Rod
Director German Tejeira
script German Tejeira
music Bruno Boselli
Gastón Otero
camera Magela Crosignani
occupation
  • Roberto Suárez: Magician Antonio
  • Daniel Melingo : singer Miguel Angel
  • Marcel Keoroglian: Taxi driver César
  • Elisa Gagliano: Toll Controller Laura
  • Julieta Franco: Lucia, César's daughter
Connection of the three episodes in "Una noche sin luna"

The episodendrama Una noche sin luna (Spanish for "A moonless night") is the first feature film by Uruguayan director Germán Tejeira from 2014. The film won the 2014 Zurich Film Festival in the International Film category .

action

On New Year's Eve, three men want to escape their loneliness and set off for Malabrigo, a small town in Uruguay.

There is the divorced taxi driver César, who visits his ex-wife's new family and wants to fill his relationship with his five-year-old daughter, who lives with her mother, with more life. After dinner with the new family, the two visit an amusement park, the guards of which turn on the rides especially for them.

The aging magician Antonio, on his way to a performance in the Malabrigo community center with his white rabbit Oliver, is forced to spend the night on a country road due to a breakdown in his car. At a nearby toll station he made the acquaintance of the lonely toll controller Laura, who in this border area should prevent drivers from avoiding the toll on the motorway by using the side road. Laura has prepared herself for a New Year's Eve in no man's land with an audio course in Chinese and a bottle of wine, which she cannot open.

The singer and guitarist Miguel Angel gets needs, from prison, where he spend another 14 months clearance : At a concert in that community center, he has to replace his colleagues prevented. While the event manager advertises him as big and famous, it does not appear as if this is true. He wants to celebrate his comeback that evening , even if nobody is listening to him at first.

production

The film was directed by Rain Dogs Cine from Montevideo , a production company of directors Germán Tejeira and Julián Goyoaga and Cine El calefon produced .

characters

In this film, “the little people seem to be portrayed in their everyday lives, and yet they experience very extraordinary things that night.” Christoph Schneider called the characters “anti-heroes who can no longer tell a story because life has drawn them.” Den Characters find it difficult to relate to other people. They are “always on the way to or away from someone” and “experienced moments of closeness and tenderness, recognition and familiarity, but also the feeling of being abandoned and lonely.” It seems as if the characters “have no place in the world ”. According to Schmöller, they are “silent, insecure and searching in their gaze”, and yet or perhaps because of this they win the hearts of the audience. This may also be due to the fact that, as Diego Brodersen noted, the film avoids looking down at the characters and instead radiates warmth. Also, no judgment is made about the characters. The film, according to Harguindey, draws the protagonists with great accuracy and gives the feeling that you understand them and are dear to them.

You don't learn much about the characters' living conditions. For example, it remains in the dark what Miguel was convicted of or what past the magician has. This, according to Jonathan Holland, is more reminiscent of a Steve Buscemi gangster than a professional magician.

Since the film has only a few dialogues, facial expressions , gestures and music play a special role. The background music with a “pleasantly melancholy soundtrack”, the melancholy music by Boselli and Otero fits the film, and Tom Waits ' ballad Lullaby , which can be heard in a sequence, perfectly expresses the mood of the film with its innocent longing.

Themes and motifs

The critics agreed that the theme of loneliness was at the center of the film. The location of the film in the rural nowhere of South America fits the loneliness of the characters.

Love also plays a central role, "the love that is hoped for or surprised, that smoulders in the background or falls asleep".

The passing of time is also discussed in the form of opportunities that arise, are taken or missed.

The three storylines are linked by the motif of power outages that occurred that night. A longer power interruption holds surprises in store for all figures. The film title (German: A moonless night ) refers to this red thread .

criticism

The critics unanimously praised the “lightness” of the film and the way the film captivates viewers through its mood.

The melancholy of the film was also noticed by a number of critics, also formulated as “minor”, ​​“New Year's Eve blues” or “bittersweet taste”.

Jonathan Holland saw "cautious joke", Verena Schmöller praised the humorous approach and the combination of wit, irony and insurmountable tragedy. Christoph Schneider spoke of "a shot of wonderfully absurd humor"

Jonathan Holland praised the "refreshing directness", Diego Brodersen characterized the film as a "fable without morals".

Jonathan Holland saw minor "rookie mistakes" in the overemphasis on César's hopelessness and isolation by the camera work; conversations about UFOs are superfluous. Laura's Chinese learning creates a "wrong tone" and the silence in some scenes is long for no reason. But the empathic drawing of the characters makes up for the predictability of the plot. Occasional complaints were also made that the film lacks tension for long stretches - “The chemistry is right, but the story is lagging behind.” The film primarily “relies on the magic of the moment”. The first and third episodes offer little new.

Several critics considered the story with the magician to be the "most dynamic and successful" because communication is more successful here than in the others and because it succeeds in conjuring up the romantic magic of chance encounters. "Diego Brodersen, who wrote in this episode looked the most humane. Benjamin Harguindey even believed that the end of this atypical boy-meets-girl story was shattering and heartbreaking.

Cinematic references

The loose connection between the three Historias Mínimas is a cinematic and literary short form that has been popular in South America since director Carlos Sorín's film of the same name received the Goya in 2003 . A proximity to the episode structure in Robert Altman was also perceived by the critics. Diego Brodersen spoke of a "choral structure" and noted that the film did not bring anything new structurally.

In the stories, Jonathan Holland noted a proximity to Raymond Carver , the situation of episodes on a New Year's Eve reminded of Happy New Year by Christoph Schaub from 2008. Diego Batlle noted that the melancholy of the holiday reminded one of Lucho Bender's film Felicidades .

Many outlines of figures and endings of sequences begin in the center of the picture and then lead backwards, into the horizon and beyond. This reminded Christoph Schneider of the end of modern times .

Nominations and Awards

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g A Moonless Night - Una noche sin luna (2014). , www.outnow.ch, accessed on January 13, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Verena Schmöller: Una noche sin luna. A musical ease. , www.kino-zeit.de, accessed on January 13, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Christoph Schneider: Prizes for stories from the edges of the world The competition juries of the 10th Zurich Film Festival have awarded their Golden Eyes. From a Swiss point of view, the award ceremony was an extremely successful event. , www.tagesanzeiger.ch, October 4, 2014, accessed on January 13, 2016.
  4. ↑ Valentín Trujillo: Llueven perros y proyectos de cine. , www.elobservador.com.uy, August 1, 2014, accessed January 13, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Benjamin Harguindey: La melancolía. Crítica: 'Una noche sin luna.' , escribiendocine.com, September 22, 2014, accessed January 14, 2016 (Spanish).
  6. ↑ a b c Diego Batlle: Una noche sin luna. Algún lugar en el mundo. , www.lanacion.com.ar, December 24, 2014, accessed January 14, 2016 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Diego Brodersen: Historias que confluyen en un pueblo. , www.pagina12.com.ar, December 24, 2014, accessed January 14, 2016 (Spanish).
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Jonathan Holland: ' A Moonless Night' ('Una Noche sin Luna'): San Sebastian Review. , www.hollywoodreporter.com, September 24, 2014, accessed January 2, 2015.
  9. ↑ a b The beauty of melancholy: 'Una noche sin luna' in the cinema. , www.zff.com, December 17, 2015, accessed January 13, 2015.
  10. ^ Announcement on the participation of Una noche sin luna , www.sansebastianfestival.com, accessed on January 1, 2016.
  11. ↑ Announcement on the nomination of Una noche sin luna for the Cine Latino Award and the New Voices / New Visions Grand Jury Prize , www.akas.imdb.com, accessed on January 1, 2016.
  12. ↑ Una noche sin luna ganó en 'Detour'. , www.republica.com, November 9, 2015, accessed January 13, 2016.
  13. ↑ La ópera prima 'Una noche sin luna', seleccionada por Uruguay para los Óscar. , www.efe.com, September 28, 2015, accessed January 1, 2016.
  14. ↑ Communication on the nomination of Una noche sin luna for the Goya 2016 , premiosgoya.academiadecine.com, accessed on January 13, 2016.
  15. ↑ SANFIC announcement on the participation of Una noche sin luna ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , www.sanfic.com, accessed January 13, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sanfic.com