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The new Adrian Caetano’s production, FRANCIA, will definitely
come as quite a surprise for the fans of this Latin American director. It is
that Caetano is famous for his political and social commitment as well as
for the great sense of realism (see: BOLIVIA, 2001) which are almost
completely absent in his latest movie.
FRANCIA is a story of a disfunctional family and their everyday struggle to
make ends meet. It’s also a tale about a girl who escapes to the world of
the music so as to avoid hearing her parents fighting and to forget about
the brutal reality.
Mariana, a tiny, funny-looking and sweet girl, lives in her own world, in
which her name is Gloria and her parents have never split. She watches the
world around her through a kind of pink glasses, what makes the perspective
more optimistic that it really is. At the same time, it’s the perspective of
a child, unorginised, and a bit confusing, but still interesting. Moreover,
Mariana always either listenes to her walkman or takes pictures, both of
which help her to saparate from and then somehow link with the real world.
The child figure makes the movie less tragic and sad and also provokes a lot
of funny situations. However, the story itself wasn’t thought to be light
and simple. In fact, the life of Cristina, Mariana’s mother, and her
ex-husband to whom she rents part of her house in order to make some more
money, is rather tough and depressing. Althoug it’s easy to notice that
these two truly love each other, somehow they fail in being a couple. As
Caetano explained during the interview for Kinematrix, it’s because of them
being so similar one to another, and of the major frustration that they
suffer everyday while facing the reality.
Natalia Oreiro’s performance as Cristina, a working single mother who tries
to do her best to offer her own child a better life, deserves applause. She
deals perfectly with her task and is pretty amazing in her role. Milagros
Caetano, who’s in fact the director’s daughter, is simply irreplaceable as
Mariana and brings something joyful to this quite unhappy story.
Also, I believe that it’s thanks to Milagros that
Francia, even though it’s
more a dramma than a comedy, gives the viewers a positive feeling and a
dosis of humor. Although there is no hope for better future, no escape, no
salvation for this family (and, who knows, maybe for Latin America as well),
thanks to this little girl, her creative imagination and the music she plays
constatly, the movie manages to make us smile, if not laugh, and we leave
the cinema with a strange sense of relief.
09:09:2009
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