Review: The Gentiles
by Júlia Olmo
- Santi Amodeo’s film is an attempt to reflect adolescence and all its complexity, but his insistence on self-reference ends up undermining its believability
The Gentiles [+see also:
trailer
interview: Santi Amodeo
film profile], the new feature by Santi Amodeo (The Pilgrim Factor, Astronauts, Doghead), which is competing in the official section of the Seville European Film Festival, attempts to be a modern-day reflection of adolescence, that often-complex stage of life when we start having trouble understanding what is happening to us and around us. Emotional strain, existential and romantic conflicts, various changes, desires, urges, angst and fears all rear their heads at this time of life, when the pain and pleasure of life usually start to concertina together more intensely. From this well-meaning starting point, Amodeo’s movie tells the story of a group of female schoolfriends who flirt with the idea of suicide via social networks. For them, the concept of killing themselves is akin to a game, an escape route and a way of alleviating their problems. It’s transgressive, something that could even be fun, as there’s an element of risk and mystery to it.
The Seville-born filmmaker tells this story by using the voice of one of the girls, Ana, who at this time of multiple crises feels as though her only attachment to the world is her mate Corrales, another of the teenagers in the group. In principle, this would seem to be a wise and interesting decision. Narrating the tale from the point of view of the young woman allows the filmmaker to delve deeper into the conflicts that he is attempting to portray, and reflect in a natural way the thoughts, feelings and actions that these entail, as and when they crop up, without any moralising. In some of the more eye-opening scenes, the camera successfully captures the complexity and the ambiguity of this stage of life, its moments of sadness and joy, that hunger for life and death referred to previously.
However, interesting ideas do not always make for an interesting film. On many occasions, they end up being nothing more than islands, or isolated scenes that merely hint at said ideas. This is what happens in The Gentiles: the ideas are there, but their potential gets watered down by some less sage decisions. There’s an insistence on the filmmaker’s part to refer to himself and to cram the film with these self-references, as well as to shock, and all of this ends up masking the characters’ point of view, the truthfulness and the authenticity that they could have had but which they end up losing. At certain points, one gets the feeling that it’s Amodeo himself who’s talking, rather than these teenage girls. Was it really necessary for them to talk about certain films and perhaps mention the ones that were particularly pleasing? Why? To what end? If a director wishes to reflect the story of a number of specific characters, together with their emotional, sentimental, social and economic world, wouldn’t it be better to think about what those characters would say and do?
If the intention is to tell this specific story, venturing beyond clichés and basic concepts, to talk about particular conflicts – in this case, the ambiguity of adolescence, and the draw of death and life – it’s not sufficient to just deploy a couple of elements that supposedly represent this generation, as genuine as they may be. You have to make this story and its characters believable, and give them that particular voice and context, and this is where Amodeo’s film does not succeed. Nor does it get to the bottom of what he is trying to portray. Their conflicts may be well explained, but in the end, we do not end up believing in the darkness lurking inside these characters, or their constant toying with death.
The merit of the filmmaker (and of anyone who decides to make a work of fiction) lies in knowing how to tell the story that he or she wants to tell, which elements to use and how to use them – but also which ones to steer clear of. That is almost always the most important thing: knowing what to cut out, what would be best left untold, what to leave out. It would appear that Amodeo wasn’t able to resist becoming the protagonist of his own film. All in all, those shiny, good intentions he had at the start end up fading away into rather dull ideas.
The Gentiles is a Spanish production, staged by Las Gentiles AIE, Grupo Tranquilo PC and Sacromonte Films.
(Translated from Spanish)
Photogallery 20/11/2021: Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2021 - The Gentiles
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