Jauja *** (2014, Viggo Mortensen, Ghita Nørby, Viilbjørk Malling Agger) – Movie Review

Co-writer/director Lisandro Alonso’s striking, rigorous experimental pseudo-Western stars Viggo Mortensen as Gunnar Dinesen, a dad who travels with his teenage daughter from Denmark in the late 19th century to an unknown Patagonia desert that apparently ‘exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilisation’.

Gunnar is a Danish engineer who accompanies a group of Argentinian officers in a quest to conquer the region in 1882. But then his love-hungry teenage daughter Ingeborg (Viilbjørk Malling Agger) goes missing when she runs off with her lover. And Gunnar chases off after her into the desert.

The result is every bit as impressive and hard going as you’d expect. It’s bleak and unrelenting, but Mortensen of course remains a class act, mesmerisingly watchable, speaking Spanish fluently as he does in 2012’s Everybody has a Plan. Although strikingly filmed, Jauja is offputtingly made to look like a home movie as it is shot on 35mm film and framed in 1.33 screen, with rounded corners.

Apparently Jauja (pronounce it ‘how ha’) means a longed-for land of milk and honey that you never reach. You know how they feel.

Mortensen is not only the star and producer, but he also helped with the music, the poster and correcting the subtitles. The dialogue is in Spanish and Danish.

In case you want a read, Fabian Casas wrote a novelisation of the film as he and Alonso were writing the screenplay together. Their script is only 20 pages long for a 109 minute movie.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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