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research-article2017
LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17701133LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESBarker / FILM REVIEW

Film Review
Undistinguished Citizens
The Guilty, the Nobodies, and the Untamed
by
Jennifer Lynde Barker

Amat Escalante La regin salvaje (The Untamed), Mexico, 2016.

Mariano Cohn and Gastn Duprat El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen),
Argentina, 2016
Juan Sebastin Mesa Los nadie (The Nobodies), Colombia, 2016.
Ivn D. Gaona Pariente (Guilty Men), Colombia, 2016.

Los nadies: los hijos de nadie,

los dueos de nada.
Los nadies: los ningunos, los ninguneados,
corriendo la liebre, muriendo la vida, jodidos,
rejodidos.
Eduardo Galeano, Los nadies

Muere lentamente
quien no viaja,
quien no lee,
quien no oye msica,
quien no encuentra gracia en si mismo.

Martha Medeiros, Muere lentamente

The Venice International Film Festival in 2016 offered a promising selection of films
from Latin America. Four films in particular stood out: La regin salvaje, directed by
Amat Escalante; El ciudadano ilustre, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastn Duprat; Los
nadie, directed by Juan Sebastin Mesa; and Pariente, directed by Ivn D. Gaona. Three
of these films also won major awards (Best Director to Amat Escalante, Best Actor to
Oscar Martnez in El ciudadano ilustre, and the Venice Critics Week audience award to
Los nadie). While distinctive in narrative focus and national origin, all these films con-
template politics in its most basic and intimate form: the struggle for power and peace-
ful expression between groups and individuals and the crucial role in this struggle of
men with guns. They also address in both standard and imaginative ways some of the

Jennifer Lynde Barker is an associate professor at Bellarmine University, where she is also the
director of the film studies minor and the design, arts, and technology major, and the author of
The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection (2012; reprint 2016).

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 215, Vol. 44 No. 4, July 2017, 247253
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17701133
2017 Latin American Perspectives

247
248 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Figure 1. Pipa lovingly tattooing Ana in Los nadie.

systemic problems these countries have struggled with in the past half century, includ-
ing human rights violations, political corruption, drug cartels, kidnappings, disappear-
ances, guerrilla warfare, poverty, and injustice. But while they are specific in terms of
social and national scenarios, they also speak to contemporary political issues on a
global scale and in the United States in particular. The key question of who is a citizen
and who is an alien is an urgent issue at present, and these films explore this problem
in uniquely insightful ways. Indeed, their English titles form an interesting confluence
on this subject: nobodies, the untamed, guilty men, distinguished citizens. Thus, this
review not only examines each film individually but also explores their imaginative
forays regarding citizenship and alienation and the function of art in relation to politics.
The fiction feature debut of Juan Sebastin Mesa is set in his hometown of Medelln,
Colombia. Shot on a micro budget, Los nadie is artfully crafted around a typical day in
the life of its protagonists: a group of young friends who weave in and out of the violence
of the city as gracefully as they juggle in front of stopped traffic. Mesa hauntingly evokes
the fragility of life and art in a politically volatile environment through the characters
interrupted conversations: their words are set against a backdrop of immanent violence.
Just what this violence is can be hard to determinethe recurring noises could be fire-
works or gunshots. The friendsPipa (Luis Felipe lzate), Camilo (Alejandro Prez
Ceferino), Ana (Maria Anglica Puerta), Mechas (Esteban Alcaraz), and Manu (Maria
Camila Castrilln)are clearly caught in the middle, seeking a way to respond that is
politically charged but nonviolent. In this they are typical of punk culture in Medellns
long-standing and well-established punk scene, of which the leads are clearly members.
And while they are typical of rebellious teenagers in a way that verges on clich, they are
characterized by a naturalness and vulnerability that makes them sympathetic and com-
pelling (Figure 1). This may be because the roles are played by nonprofessional actors:
the characters experiences and conversations are marked by an earnest anguish and
hope that have yet to contend with cynicism. The film bears many similarities to Vctor
Gavirias striking Rodrigo D: No futuro (1990) in its realist style, its nonprofessional actors,
its loosely woven stories about youth trapped in a violent city, and its punk and metal
music, but ultimately it sees a future for its protagonists.
One of the films strong suits is its soundtrack, including local bands Krujido,
Renkore, Terror Nuclear, and O.D.I.O.hardcore punk and metal music that mixes raw
emotion with cautious lyricism (All we can do is sing a hymn to this misery, one song
 Barker / FILM REVIEW 249

Figure 2. Sweeping vistas and hidden identity in Pariente.

proclaims). The jarring delivery of the music is a perfect vehicle to infuse an urgent rage
into the otherwise abstract Marxist lyrics: the eternal problem of money and maldis-
tribution, a cruel and unjust system supported by the ambition of a small group of
capitalists and their manipulation. The noisy urgency of the music also contrasts
sharply with a visual calm that searches out a meditative center at the heart of the anger.
There are a number of scenes in which aesthetics and music merge to give us a glimpse
of time slowed down; these are among the films most riveting and cinematic moments.
For example, when Pipa sprays paint from an aerosol can at a wall, we follow first him
as he runs, then the erratic line he makes before pausing to watch the tendrils of paint
drip down, making a shape of their own. In these sequences we enter into the acts of
creation that best reveal the function and meaning of their artistic protest.
Mesa treats all his characters gently, even the parents who clearly embody a way of
existing that Pipa and the others reject: the false hope of religion, the grim acceptance of
wage labor, confusion and inarticulate suffering. This increases the pathos of the film: the
anger and frustration of the youth is not really targeted at their parents, even though their
choices cause them pain. The struggle for their souls survival takes precedence over fam-
ily ties and responsibilities. This is most clearly seen in the failure of Camilo to break the
chains with which the city binds him: he is physically and symbolically shorn by a group
of angry men. The outcome of this acta shaved headironically brings a smile to his
mothers face because she only sees that he finally looks normal and tamed. This is the
awful truth at the heart of the film: by refusing to take obvious sides in an omnipresent
political war, the punk teenagers become double targets, doubly screwed. Their choices
may seem apolitical at times, but choosing peaceful creation over violent suppression or
resistance can also be dangerous. It is not clear which side threatens Camilo, erasing his
indigenous identity and perhaps his future, but it doesnt matter. Society in general ben-
efits from taming him and any other citizen who tries to choose a different path or mark
himself as alien. The film ends, however, with a nascent hope of escape to Ecuador, a
country the friends believe may show some promise for a socialist future.
Director Ivn D. Gaonas feature film debut Pariente focuses on the demilitarization
in Colombia taking place in 2005. More overtly political than Los nadie, it also differs in
its setting: the small town of Gepsa in Santander. The film is a modern Western featur-
ing gunplay and violence, moral ambiguity, and sweeping vistas of a country in which
men alternately hide from each others guns and from themselves (Figure 2). The trans-
lation of its title as Guilty Men brings certain key elements to the fore but leaves out
the complex implications of the original Kinship. The film explores corruption and
betrayal at multiple levels, from government and military to friends and kin, showing
us how they are joined by tradition, culture, and desire. The film focuses primarily on
the men of the town, although a key plot concerns a woman two men love. Mariana
(Leidy Herrera) has chosen Ren (Ren Diaz Caldern) over his cousin Willington
(Willington Gordillo Duarte), an act that leads her down a path of moral turpitude as
250 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Ren looks for illicit ways to finance their wedding. Willington is the moral compass of
the film, seeking a peaceful and reasonable path into the future; he is also a musician at
heart, searching for songs to express what he thinks and feels.
The town has been exploited for years by right-wing paramilitary groups, and in the
wake of a sweeping amnesty and demobilization law old-timer Alfonso (Alfonso
Lopez)Marianas fatherdecides to take justice into his own hands during a rendez-
vous gone wrong. The men are left with the extortion money and a secret death and are
forced to trust each other with both. Their trust is soon betrayed, and as the suspense
builds a story unfolds about deeper and darker secrets closer to home that complicate
the question of kinship, citizens, and aliens in the small town. As in Los nadie, local
nonprofessional actors play the roles, and their retaining their given names as the char-
acters lends the film a strong naturalism. Also similarly to the situation with Los nadie,
the music in the film adds important dimensions. Singer Edson Velandias work outside
the film is emblematic of a new national Colombian music, la rasqa, and while he adapts
his style in the film to reflect other musical traditions his talent and focus convey an
important populist subtext. For example, in a conversation about norteo and ranchera
music, the men consider how music can make cultural and political differences in the
lives of the people who listen to it. While they dont agree on an answer, Pariente empha-
sizes these ideas in the soundtrack and the way it functions in the action.
The soundtrack is primarily generated from cassette tapes discovered by Willington.
He displays a nostalgia for this lost technology, and it serves as a visual focal point
throughout the film: the labored mechanical stopping and starting give the story an
added materiality and serve as a clear metaphor for the rather tortured process of polit-
ical change taking place. The cassette technology features heavily in the final show-
down as well, when the metaphor unfolds: these old songs and soundtracks can control
and release us at will if we dont take care: traditions need to be reexamined. In the end
the film gestures toward an ambiguous future: Marianna proves to be the character
most willing to move beyond the old blood ties and unspoken pacts of guilty men in
order to safeguard the next generation. But her actions partake of violence as well, and
the recent Colombian vote against the peace agreements with the FARC confirms the
continuation of an unsettling present. Thus the film begins and ends with a Western
showdown set not at high noon but in the secret spaces of night, lit only by the head-
lights of old trucks. Visually, the films rich vistas, created by cinematographer Juan
Camilo Paredes, showcase one of the greatest promises for the future: a burgeoning
Colombian film culture in which art works alchemy on the past.
El ciudadano ilustre is a film bookmarked by the international public sphere, begin-
ning with the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the fictional Argentine writer
Daniel Mantovani (Oscar Martnez) and ending with a press release for his new novel.
In between it tells the story of a writer who is afraid he has outlived his ability to make
art and who escapes his stagnant life by traveling to his hometown of Salas for the first
time in 40 years in order to be lauded as one of its distinguished citizens. Mantovani
accepts the Nobel reluctantly, deriding the committee for denying the prize to Argentine
writer Jorge Luis Borges and asserting that it heralds his canonization as part of the
bourgeois status quo. This judgment of his work signals five years of writers block,
which seems to be why he accepts the invitation to Salas, the rural Argentine village that
has always been the source and subject of his artistic inspiration. His journey propels
him back in time into a culture that reads little but reads it literally. There is no room for
subtlety or imagination in this isolated town where macho men with guns dictate both
morality and artistic taste.
Directors Mariano Cohn and Gastn Duprat thus contrast an international and pri-
marily urban existence in a globalized twenty-first century with the alternate and perva-
sive reality of isolated rural areas. Filmed in a trio of tiny villages southwest of Buenos
 Barker / FILM REVIEW 251

Figure 3. In El ciudadano ilustre, Daniel Mantovani poses with the townspeople of Salas.

Aires, the film ponders how such different realms can coexist. Following Mantovani, we
at first view the town as a welcome and authentic relief from his airless life in Barcelona,
where he walks each day in relative isolation and a general disconnection from the rest of
humanity (Figure 3). In Salas he cannot walk down the street without being greeted or
accosted by an adoring but then increasingly hostile public. What at first seems like gen-
uine appreciation for a local hero is gradually revealed as a desperate need for attention
for a future that has passed Salas by. Mantovani awakens the frustration of those left
behind, including his former girlfriend Irene (Andrea Frigerio) and her vainglorious,
insecure, and abusive husband Antonio (Dady Brieva). He slowly begins to perceive his
own navet and hypocrisy as he confronts the ghosts from the past, the hidden agendas,
the petty jealousies and psychotic anger that erupt ever more surreally around him. Oscar
Martnez embodies the complex and changing emotions of the writer well, providing us
with a character who reflects and learns about his own and others problematic behavior
as he moves through the world.
El ciudadano ilustre is the most cynical and slick of the four films and is firmly rooted
in satire. It positions itself thus: an older man, now internationally famous, returns to
the source of his inspiration in the rather delusional belief that he has something to offer
to it or it to him. But even as we are guided to the understanding that the two have
nothing to say to each other, the end of the film allows for a more nuanced understand-
ing based on the idea of literary interpretation (as opposed to literal reading). Salas and
Mantovani may prove to be destructive and incompatible bedfellows, but the local,
isolated, and specific also feed Mantovanis art, and his art in turn provides hope for
some in Salas as well as the rest of the world. Like the characters in Los nadie, he escapes
in order to survive, creating a hymn to the misery he left behind. The film finally seems
to suggest that we need mobility of citizenship across national and regional borders if
we are to redefine ideas of us vs. them. It also implies that creating disruptive art is a
dangerous but necessary part of that process.
La regin salvaje is set in and around the city of Guanajuato in central Mexico. The
story focuses on four people: Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) and her husband Angel (Jess
Meza), her brother Fabin (Eden Villavicencio), and an enigmatic woman named
Vernica (Simone Bucio) who befriends the siblings. Director Escalante masterfully
walks the line between realism and allegory, pushing the imagination of the film far out
into the area that El ciudadano ilustre alludes to in its insistence on narrative interpreta-
tion. The title of the film makes this space clear: it is the wild regionla regin salvaje
beyond our normal range of awareness and understanding. The English title, The
Untamed, hints at the unity between idea and location but also places the wildness within
252 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Figure 4. Alejandra waits in an isolated cabin in the woods in La region salvaje.

the characters themselvesthose untamed by the social order they live in. It may also
be an allusion to the savagery that typifies much of that social order, including rape,
homophobia, male chauvinism, and economic injustice. It is not surprising that Escalante
won the award for best director; his film is an exciting and often surprising take on the
human rights issues that constantly plague society. The film is sourced in realism and
tells the story of an unhappy marriage, repressed homosexuality, systematic homopho-
bia, and disdain for womens desires. A conservative and repressive culture is typical of
the area and indeed of many areas of the world and is supported by a political system
that allows and at times seems to legally encourage a system of punishment aimed at the
victims of violence and discrimination. These issues are clearly represented throughout
the film and form the bedrock for the films foray into science fiction and horror.
La regin salvaje plays on the idea of the alien by simultaneously making it literal and
pushing it further into metaphor. The alien becomes in the film an actual alienan
uncanny octopusthat serves as a Rorschach test for the psychologically damaged and
sexually dispossessed. The movie begins in fact with a shot of an asteroid and moves
from there to the image of a woman who seems trapped in an empty cabin in the woods,
lying naked on a dirty mattress (Figure 4). As the camera pulls away from her we see
what seems like a tentacle slither away from between her legs. In the following sequence
we follow the womanVernicaas she stumbles away from the cabin, badly injured,
to arrive at her motorcycle and eventually at the hospital where she meets Fabin. The
images of the scene tell a common story: abduction, torture, and sexual assault. In
Mexico such images also bring to mind police abuse and the drug cartel rapes and
murders in Guerrero.
But while such realities are referenced throughout the film in terms of the images and
situations of violence we see, Escalante chooses to explore these horrifying problems in
an unexpected and more ambiguous way. Each of the four main characters comes in
time to the alien in the cabin in the woods: a creature who can bring them great pleasure
but also pain and death. Escalante writes of the creature that it represents pure sex, pure
id. And in many ways his film is trying to get to the heart of the human psyche. To look
at the creature is to see our own bottomless need: for pleasure, for power, for love, for
freedom, for obsession, for escape, for submission. It is the place we are born from, and
as desire is shaped by social duty and political exigency it continues to motivate us and
to lead us toward both pleasure and pain. The violence in the film is both visceral and
hidden, serving to accentuate how little is known about the victims whose bodies are
 Barker / FILM REVIEW 253

found dumped in a river or tossed into the woods but how vividly they can occupy the
imagination. The film ends abruptly, in the midst of building tensions, violence, dead
bodies, and desperation, which may be the most brutal aspect of its realism.
Each of these four films focuses on expanding our understanding of people born and
raised in places and periods of political unrest and corruption and pervasive violence
who are seeking a way to be human, to love, and to live a decent life. That this also
includes the vital importance of artistic expressionart, music, literatureis a testimony
to the rather remarkable ability of individuals to resist the political systems and structures
of power that seek to erase them.