Thursday, November 12, 2009

La hora de la siesta / Siesta


Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: La hora de la siesta, directed by Sofía Mora

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

Dad is dead and mom has locked herself in her bedroom to cry and sleep; she doesn’t want to see anyone. Franca and her younger brother guard the door of the room so none of the annoying relatives assembled in their house in the middle of the afternoon can interrupt her solitary mourning. Afterwards, while waiting for the funeral, they wander around the neighborhood, perhaps in search of fresh air to clear their weary heads. Their conversations seem to lack continuity, marked by a combination of innocence and cynicism, always revolving around the same subject: to believe or not to believe. From faith (and religious fear) to conspirational paranoia (and the myths and superstitions supposedly created by “the Yankees”: the landing on the moon in 1969, the bad luck of Friday the 13th, friend’s day!), agnosticism and skepticism. Almost teenagers, they are just two somewhat lost brothers trying to deal with one certainty (death) and the doubts it has brought about. Sofía Mora’s first feature film captures this limbo with a special sensitivity, portraying the quiet anxiety and silent uneasiness of a hot and grey afternoon in the middle of the week. This daily yet strange situation depicts the hard pain of growing up, announcing, with a stifled scream, nothing less than the end of childhood.

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