Peru

Cinequest: MAN UNDERGROUND

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MAN UNDERGROUND
MAN UNDERGROUND

The sci-fi comedy Man Underground is centered around the entirely humorless Willem (George Basil), who is emotionally scarred by a failed relationship and an occurrence that he believes was an encounter with space aliens.  Unburdened by any lack of confidence, Willem makes his way as a lecturer and Internet personality specializing in paranoid theories of government cover-ups.  He decides to make his own biopic, assisted by oddball acolytes Todd (Andy Rocco) and Flossie (Pamela Fila).

Most of Man Underground fills out the portrait of the deeply troubled and absurdly misguided Willem.  But, even with cringe humor, it’s hard to watch Willem when it turns out that the really interesting characters are Todd and Flossie.  Todd and Flossie finally get their due, but too much of Man Underground is about Willem.

https://youtu.be/OdLpSNaxaYw

Cinequest: MAGALLANES

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Magallanes_Still

The title character in the Peruvian psychological drama Magallanes is a loser, but is he a lovable loser?  Played by Damián Alcázar, Magallanes bounces around from odd job to odd job.  He can’t break even driving a borrowed outlaw taxi around the squalid streets of Lima, he lives in a basement hovel and he has one friend.  Magallanes glimpses a person from his past, and it rocks him into a series of life-changing events.

Magallanes starts out as a caper movie.  But we learn that his one friendship is from his military service in a death squad unit, dispatched to repress the indigenous population with the harshest methods. What this unit did years ago has scarred all the characters (except two snarky cops), and Magallanes is revealed to be a study of PTSD.

What is driving Magallanes’ behavior in this story?  We find that we is trying to right a past wrong.  But what?  And by whom?  The revelation in Magallanes is that some wrongs cannot be righted.

Magallanes is a showcase for Mexican actor Alcázar, whom U.S. art house audiences saw in John Sayles’ Men with Guns and as the lead in Herod’s Law.  Alcázar makes Magallanes so sympathetic that the movie’s climax is jarring and emotionally powerful.

I saw Magallanes at Cinequest, where it plays again on March 10 and 12.

https://youtu.be/oSVxY2-grAk

Cinequest: GUARD DOG

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GUARD DOG
GUARD DOG

The dark and violent Peruvian Guard Dog is set in 2001, five years after a controversial amnesty for the government-sponsored death squads active in the previous decades.  Our protagonist is the vestige of those death squads, an ascetic hit man who still performs some residual executions.  He is a Man On A Mission, and one serious dude.  After his opening hit, he takes out the photo of his victim and burns out the image’s eyes with his cigarette.

Guard Dog is ultimately more of a mood piece than a thriller.  The theme of personal corruption keeps re-emerging, with a grossly rotting apartment ceiling and even a moment of pus-draining.  The most interesting aspect of the story is our anti-hero’s encounters with an unjaded young girl who is, in contrast to him, bubbling and full of life.

I saw Guard Dog’s US Premiere at Cinequest, and it plays the fest again March 4 at the California Theatre and March 6 at Camera 12.