From Afar [Desde Allá] *** (2015, Alfredo Castro, Luis Silva, Jericó Montilla) – Classic Movie Review 12,814

The 2015 Venezuelan drama film From Afar [Desde Allá] is tense, engrossing and disturbing. It is an undeniable quality film as the 2015 Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Director Lorenzo Vigas’s 2015 Venezuelan drama film From Afar [Desde Allá] is tense, engrossing and disturbing. But is is also dark, gloomy, alienating and finally bleak. It is an undeniable quality film as the 2015 Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. You could certainly admire it but it is equally certainly hard to like it. But for audiences who seek to be ‘shocked and disturbed’, that’s certainly what this film does, and does really well. 

Alfredo Castro stars as the doomy dental prosthetics maker Armando, a 50-year-old man who seeks out young men in Caracas, observes them from a distance. and pays them just for company.

One day he meets Elder, a dangerous 17-year-old boy, a street hustler and the leader of a small gang of criminals. He just wants to admire him From Afar. They have nothing in common, and start a violent, tenuous relationship that seems to get nowhere but changes their lives for ever. Both men have extreme father issues.

Armando wants to make Elder his naked sex object, but Elder ends up beating and robbing Armando, and later stabbing him in the leg, but the boy keeps coming back and the man continues to try to make the boy dependent. and the two seem to comes to terms of a sort.

This personal collision never once looks like it is going to have a happy ending, though you’ve no idea where it’s headed, which helps to keep it engrossing. The two performances are excellent, and both men are very naturalistic and credible. That’s more of a schlep for the young actor, but he has no trouble conveying the troubled youth role. Vigas crafts it well, going for realism, paying attention to the down at heel Caracas background scene, and cutting out manipulative background music.

There’s no real clue about what this film might be about, apart from the vague idea that it’s about troublesome fatherhood, and no good’s going to come of that, ever. It’s a story, that’s all, with no judgements or conclusions, and that’s enough. Its dark pessimism is hard to handle.

Speaking out against theatre trigger warnings in February 2024, Doctor Who star Matt Smith said audiences should be ‘shocked and disturbed’. That’s why we go to the theatre isn’t it? To be shocked, to be arrested out of ourselves.’ Thank you, Matt Smith, It is almost a definition of ‘art’. Well here we are in the cinema. And that’s certainly what this film does, and does really well.

Writers: Lorenzo Vigas and Guillermo Arriaga.

Runtime: 93 minutes.

The first feature of Lorenza Vigas, it was the official submission of Venezuela for the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category of the 89th Academy Awards in 2017. It is the second film of a trilogy by Vigas about troublesome fatherhood, preceded by the short Los elefantes nunca olvidan (2004) and followed by The Box [La caja] (2021).

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,814

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