The World of Movies: Verse
Written by Rachael Crawley
The World of Movies is a series that explores global cinema, drawing on films from many countries, industries and eras. This week, we think of reinvention in Bolivia.
Verse.
May contain spoilers.
A young man departs on a great new journey, to build his future in Spain. His mother (Mirtha Elena Pardo, who shares a name with her character) can only watch and worry. While his life is beginning, hers has lost its centre – and she is unsure of where she can go from here. Verse (Alejandro Pereyra Doria Medina, 2009) explores her deep loneliness, and dives into her inner world.
Though the film has a narrative, it really leans more towards the experimental, engaging with colour and sound in unusual ways. All the while, Mirtha Elena sleepwalks through life. Her days are dull and she encounters few people. She works in a hospital, but is even disengaged there. Her main method of expression is through long letters to her son. When she receives no response, her panic fully takes over. She begins to have strange dreams, which allow the film to experiment more with off-kilter imagery. Though the editing is strong and the cinematography is very able, the film can sometimes look too dark, and some of the choices don’t quite work – for example, it relies a little too heavily on a blurred camera lens.
Despite this sombre beginning, we begin to see slight change. She receives a letter from her son; she begins to engage more with old friends. At the same time, the film seems to exist on a more realistic level. However, something still doesn’t feel right. Mirtha Elena remains in emotional trouble. While she is learning to cope with the void in her life, there is nothing to fill it. On a local bus, she comes face to face with her loss and the resulting anxieties. Here the film trips up a little. The overly dramatic score leaves it feeling too obvious. While the images convey her sense of fear and danger, most of it interior, it could have been conveyed as easily with little – or no – music.
With no further communication, Mirtha Elena tries to rebuild her life once more. While I will not give away the ending, there is both disappointment and peace to it. While her world continues to shift, she now has a greater capacity to cope. She has changed.
While plenty of time is spent with Mirtha Elena’s feelings, she can seem one-dimensional at times, as if we can only reach the same emotional notes on repeat. It makes the character slightly too shallow for a film dealing so heavily with her interior thoughts. While the film has a lot of great ways to illustrate her psyche, a little variation could have made it even stronger.
Considering the film’s relationship with writing, it is not surprising to discover that Pereyra Doria Medina is a poet. He is perhaps even better known for his writing than his filmmaking, particularly in Bolivia. Here, he demonstrates that he can transition to a distinctive experimental style. Considering his facility for both words and images, I am excited to see how he will bring this combination to the screen again.
Rachael Crawley holds a Master's Degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, and has worked with film in Canada and in Europe. She adores language and cinema, and how these subjects interact with each other.