Director Oliver Laxe helmed this official Spanish entry into the Best International Feature Film Academy Awards competition. The synopsis for the film reads:”After a young woman goes missing in a rave, her father and brother brave the arid Moroccan landscape searching for her in a world on the brink of collapse.” It showed at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
CANNES ACCOLADES
Sergi Lopez (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), Mar’s father Luis, has his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) with him and Esteban has brought along his dog, Pipa. Pipa, a Jack Russell Terrier, and a second dog, Lupita, a Podenco mix, actually won the Palme Dog Jury Prize at Cannes. “Sirat,” the film, won the Jury Prize at Cannes.
CAST
The rave participants (and Mad Max film doubles) that we meet are:Jade Oukid as Jade; Stefanie Gadda as Stef; Joshua Liam Henderson as Josh; Tonin Janvier as Tonin; and Richard “Bigui” Bellamy as Bigui. I do think it was Bigui who left his LSD-permeated feces unburied in the desert so that Pipa ate it and nearly croaked, although Bigui denies it. (These things happen; the incident is another example of the film’s black humor).Thoughts are expressed about choosing one’s own familty being preferable to being stuck with those bound to you by blood. Mar is not a run-away. She is an adult who chose to leave and has been missing for 5 months, as her little brother confirms.
Two of the men have missing limbs. One has no right hand; one has no left leg and uses a peg-leg prosthetic contraption. At one point, when the prosthetic limb is removed, the amputated knee joint appears to sing a song about deserting the army, which qualifies as entertainment when you’re stuck in the desert and adds to the film’s dark humor. It certainly sums up this group’s attitude towards the military, a group which is constantly shown threatening to break up the raves or take over the world or start WWIII. (One doesn’t know, for sure, what their exact goal may be.)
DIRECTOR
Director Oliver Laxe (who stands 6’ 6 and ¾” tall) has made four feature films. This one was quite engrossing. It is “Mad Max-style shit” as another viewer said to me as we exited. All of the participants at the first rave, shot in Rambla Barrachina, Teruel, Aragon, Spain look like extras from a George Miller “Mad Max” film. Their clothes (“Freaks” tee shirt, an homage to the 1932 film), hair (or lack of same), tattoos— are in style for an apocalyptic thriller. The group that Luis throws in with includes 2 Mad Max style vehicles, with 2 women and 3 men in the group, as named above.
PLOT
The first rave is dispersed by the military. That leads Luis to beg the 5 Mad Max-like characters to take Luis and Estaban along, leading the way to the next rave further into the desert near Mauritania. Luis’s financial contribution to purchasing gas is probably the clincher for the eventual yes vote.
Initially, the 5 ravers say no, because Luis is driving a Family Truckster van (as I call the one my own spouse drives.) They are going to have to ford a stream at one point (Laguna de Tortjada, Tortajada, Teruel, Aragon, Spain). The troupe correctly predict that Luis’ vehicle will have trouble making it across that stream. Indeed, that turns out to be one of many death-defying adventures that the troupe will have as they press forward. The mountainous terrain makes driving treacherous.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
In a Cannes interview, Director Luxe said, “I think we were very bold. We were very daring. We didn’t measure things. We didn’t calculate. We just leapt into the abyss.” That’s for sure. As the not-that-merry troupe proceeds into the abyss, for 115 minutes we will see one after the other crash and burn in various ways. There are explosions. There are crashes. There is the threat of nearby armies that may descend at any moment.
HUMOR
This trip through Hell reminded some of “The Wages of Fear” (source material for William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” film) but, for me, it was Mad Max Redux with occasional bleak humor (like the aforementioned amputated leg singing a song), or the recitation by one of the troupe that his father’s last words were: “Fuck! This is serious.”
As Jade has mentioned about the large speakers she recycles, “You never know if this is the last sound it will make.” She’s right about that for the speakers, and she’s right about that for all of them, as they attempt to navigate from the first disbanded rave to a second one. Jade will long be remembered, post film, for her words, “Blow it up!” requesting more volume from the huge speakers the group sets up in the middle of the desert.
CONCLUSION
This 115-minute Spanish submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar list, is not a boring movie, like an earlier submission from a Nordic country. It holds your interest. It may well blow you away.
