Vuelve - come back!

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Movie
German title Vuelve - come back!
Original title Vuelve
Country of production Argentina
original language Spanish
Publishing year 2012
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Iván Noel
script Iván Noel
production Iván Noel
music Iván Noel
camera Iván Noel
cut Iván Noel
occupation

Vuelve - come back! (Spanish original title: Vuelve ) is a 2012 Argentinian film directed by Iván Noel . As with his previous films, Noel u. a. as a director, screenwriter and composer. The film combines a coming-of-age story with elements from horror films and psychological thrillers .

action

The art historian Gregorio settled with his wife Sofia and his son Gabriel in the Santa Catalina monastery in the province of Córdoba after he had expelled the order there by legally dubious means and is committed to the preservation of the cultural heritage. From time to time tourists appearing are guided through the monastery by Sofia. Despite the work of the gardener Julio, the large monastery garden remains neglected and the unharvested fruits rot. Gabriel has a very strong bond with Sofia, while Gregorio is cold and dismissive of both and prefers to deal with books and documents. However, Gabriel memorizes a story of his father, according to which a viceroy once let the monks of the monastery come to death in order to be able to raise his illegitimate son there, but then converted to a monk himself out of remorse and returned the monastery to the order have; God gave him eternal life for it, which is why the monk is still here.

Gregorio is in distress when the provincial police officer Luis tells him that the evicted order has requested an examination of the documents and wants to evict him from the monastery as illegitimate owner with the support of the new governor. In addition, Eva - a local prostitute - is pregnant again (probably from Gregorio). Meanwhile, Sofia's mental state is getting worse, which leads to her suicide in front of Gabriel's eyes. A world collapses for the boy and Aunt Debora, who is a psychologist, travels to support the bereaved. On her advice, Sofia had been admitted to an institution in the past because she suffered from Cotard's syndrome . Debora's attempts to get closer to Gabriel are just as unsuccessful as Gregorio's.

Gabriel, who is roaming the garden restlessly, suddenly appears to Sofia, who tells him that God will give him a second life if Gabriel would do good deeds. From then on, the boy follows Sofia's instructions, which is sometimes accompanied by the appearance of the monk from Gregorio's story; so he begins to collect rotten fruit and unearths a supposedly lost document in his father's documents (in fact, it is Gabriel's adoption certificate, whose birth mother is actually the prostitute Eva). Gregorio and Debora get more and more restless, while Gabriel, following Sofia's instructions, poisons the dog and one day mixes its blood in lunch. Debora now wants to have him interned because she suspects the same mental disorder as Sofia, but Gregorio doesn't want to hear about it. Gabriel's attempt to drown herself in the pond is prevented by Eva's sudden appearance, who, however, is humiliated by Debora and (with police help) chased away again.

Gregorio argues with Debora and moves her to leave. He then lets Eva come to the monastery to introduce her to Gabriel as his real mother for the first time. But led by Sofia, who makes clear her hatred of the prostitute, to whom her husband was addicted while she could not have children herself, Gabriel pours acid on Eva and flees into the garden. Gregorio pursues him and angrily confronts him with the fact that Eva and not Sofia is his mother, whereupon Gabriel attacks him and he falls into the compost pit. Following an inspiration, Gabriel lets the unprotected end of a power cable left behind by the gardener into the damp pit; his father dies from the electric shock. Back at the monastery, Gabriel follows Eva, who is blinded by the acid and now completely frightened, up a tower until she falls into the depths. The boy, unmoved, takes the bloody fetus that the previously pregnant woman has lost and, in memory of Sofia, hands it over to the pond before he plunges into it himself. In the water he is finally reunited with Sofia.

During the end credits, Debora can be seen walking through the cloister garden, searching.

analysis

The film plays with numerous symbols and encrypted content. The legend told by Gregorio about the viceroy seems to coincide with his own story: like him, he has a wife who cannot have children and an extramarital affair that resulted in a son whom he raised in the monastery; like the viceroy, he spared no means of driving the monks out of the monastery, and apparently, like the latter, he let the garden be poisoned.

The central theme is the Cotard syndrome , from which Sofia suffers, and with the definition of which the film begins. The motives “rot” derive from its symptoms (Sofia complains that children rot in her, and then they themselves from within; the fruits of the garden rot) and “blood” (Sofia explains to Gabriel that she actually has no treatment, but needs blood, which is why he mixes the dog's blood with his food; on Gabriel's last trip to the pond, in his imagination, blood drips down on him from all the rotten fruits).

Gabriel's actions (at Sofia's instructions) are already indicated in a variety of ways: the gathering of the fruit in declarations from Sofia and the monk that everything would rot; the killing of the dog in several sad looks from Sofia, which disturbed his barking, and her last words before her suicide that Gabriel should silence the dog, and Gabriel's discovery of the poison in the middle of Julio's gardening equipment; the dazzling of Eve in Sofia's enthusiastic remarks about Gabriel's clear eyes, which suggested a pure soul, and her warning that they (especially with Gregorio) could cause sins of the flesh; the killing of Gregorio in Julio's warning when Gabriel watered the lawn and came too close to the lawnmower's power cord, as well as Sofia's repeated removal of the hairdryer cord from the sink; finally Gabriel's suicide in the attempt before and in the intervening immersion in the bathtub.

Many details remain unclear: Gregorio's motives for the acquisition of the monastery and the poisoning of the garden, the background of the monk's legend, Sofia's "betrayal" (which Gregorio apparently reported to the museum authorities), or the meaning of the scene when Gabriel's nose was bleeding, he does not want to wipe the blood away even after Gregorio's remark (the scene is exactly the same in Noel's second film Brecha ). It becomes clear that the relationship between Gabriel and Sofia goes further than an ordinary mother-child relationship: the scene in the shower when Sofia lathers Gabriel, and the scene on the sofa when Sofia caresses Gabriel's leg with increasing intensity, which is with him A sex scene between Gregorio and Eva was cut together and the boy apparently ends in an orgasm suggest an incestuous relationship.

The monastery alone offers enough Christian motifs, with only Sofia being portrayed as religious (Gregorio, on the other hand, makes his disdain for religion clear). The name of Gabriel's birth mother, Eva, is particularly telling in connection with the monastery garden and its poisonous fruits. It is questionable why the monastery is named after St. Catherine, although it was always a pure monastery, as Gregorio already explains to his wife in the opening scene.

Creation and publication

Vuelve is Noel's first film to be shot and produced in Argentina. However, 18 months before filming, he had already recorded a concept trailer in Seville. As with the previous films, there was hardly any budget available. In terms of content, after the light comedy ¡Primaria! a return to darker subjects; Noel's central thoughts were motherly love, death and religion. In addition, the type of camera work and image composition changed compared to the earlier films. Musically, Noel started out from Arvo Pärt's Berliner Messe (1990–1992), whose Agnus Dei can be heard in full in the final sequence.

Like his previous films, Noel also made Vuelve available free of charge on his YouTube channel , while he offers the director's cut along with a making-of and director's commentary on the DVDs he produced himself . It is the Spanish version with English (and optionally French on DVD) subtitles. In Germany, Vuelve was released by cmv-Laservision in 2013 on DVD with German subtitles.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Vuelve - Come back! Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2013 (PDF; test number: 137 441 V).
  2. ↑ Vuelve conceptual teaser on YouTube
  3. ↑ Georgi: Exclusive Interview: Director Ivan Noel of En Tu Ausencia. In: TheSkyKid.com. Retrieved October 7, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Vuelve press kit. (PDF) Noel Films, p. 2 , accessed on October 3, 2015 (English).