02/11/2022 - Javier Codesal’s winner of the Ji.hlava Award for Original Approach combines the spiritual with the carnal

Spanish director Javier Codesal scored the Ji.hlava International Film Festival’s Award for Original Approach with Greater Gospel [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see the news), with the jurors arguing, “Cinema is still very young and new approaches are open.” In an odd way, it makes sense that that statement is as opaque as the film itself, with Codesal playing with many toys here and never really explaining why.

In the Josete Massa Residence in Madrid, the world’s first retirement home for senior LGBTQI+ citizens, religion meets those it has been excluding, and the spiritual meets the carnal. Codesal asks his protagonists to go back to biblical texts, then reimagine them and maybe eventually reclaim them, too. Now, when an angel tells Mary that she will become pregnant, give birth to a son and name him Jesus, he hears: “How can this be? I’m a trans woman.” Change is happening, that much is clear – both in their approach to something that has been considered indisputable and in their surroundings, undergoing renovation. Sometimes it even comes with some humour.

It's interesting, at least for a while, as Greater Gospel is overlong and becomes repetitive as a result. Maybe the whole idea was to underline the rituals surrounding religion, the constant repetition that ultimately makes people believe. What saves it from coming off as an empty exercise, however, is the swerve into the personal, as there is a whole story here about how it feels to grow old as a member of the LGBTQI+ community, or simply just to grow old.

“When you were young, you dressed yourself and went wherever you wanted. When you grow old, you will hold out your hands, and someone else will dress you and take you where you didn’t want to go,” it is stated here, and you feel it. There are tales of dealing with sickness, with AIDS, with figuring out how you can remain a sexual being once the body betrays you and weakens. These are probably the most affecting parts.

Especially at the beginning, Greater Gospel reads more like an essay or someone’s dissertation, with lengthy statements opening the film. The Book of J gets a mention, and so does queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid – “All theology is sexual theology,” she used to claim – as well as usual suspects Pasolini and Jarman. Codesal wants to address many things in his work, and finding a visually dynamic way to do it is clearly not a priority. But he does have a lot of affection for the people he invited to play, and whom he even convinced to expose their bodies. Walking around empty corridors, naked, they are shedding their skin, too. Finally full of acceptance and maybe even grace.

Greater Gospel was produced by Javier Codesal and Julia Sieiro.