CINE LAS AMERICAS 2011: PORTRAITS IN A SEA OF LIES

Marina (Paola Baldión) in Portraits in a Sea of Lies.

Aiming for the truth

By Don Simpson

Marina (Paola Baldión) is a shy, spacey and practically mute young woman who lives with her abusive grandfather (Edgardo Román) in a leaky old shed. When her grandfather dies in a freak accident, Marina is passed along to live and work with her womanizing cousin, Jairo (Julián Román).

Jairo is a Polaroid photographer who uses his occupation as an excuse to bed the bevy of bikini-clad buxom babes who pass between the front of his camera lens and the cheesy tropical backdrops. Marina takes the roll of Jairo’s handy-dandy prop handler in stride, dutifully assisting with the carrying of sombreros, rocking horses, etc. — we sense that even this is an improvement over the time she spent with her grandfather.

The two cousins hop in Jairo’s car and embark upon a road trip to the land where their grandfather once owned a house. The goal is to literally unearth their grandfather’s deed to the land, then cash in the deed in order to claim their inheritance from the government. Actually this is solely Jairo’s plan. Marina could care less about the inheritance; she is just along for the ride.

This is where Portraits in a Sea of Lies transforms into a somewhat traditional road movie, as writer-director Carlos Gaviria utilizes the ample driving time to showcase his documentary roots; he integrates several ethnographic sequences into the narrative as a means for the audience to visually contemplate the true-to-life political, social and financial unrest festering within the Colombian borders. Gaviria also uses these neo-realist techniques as a way to ground his fantastical forays into magic realism — being that Marina exists primarily in her own mind, Gaviria allows us the opportunity to glimpse the world from Marina’s dreamlike perspective.

The road trip also triggers a series of childhood flashbacks in Marina’s mind, as she frightfully relives the moment when her parents were murdered. We instantly understand why Marina is so timid and bashful — she experienced this life-scarring atrocity that left her an orphan at such a young age. This here is the point of Gaviria’s film: to enlighten foreign audiences about the ramifications of the violence in Colombia. (10 percent of Colombia’s population has been displaced by violence.) We see guns and violence everywhere along Marina and Jairo’s journey. It seems completely normal to the Colombians, as if they see men armed with machine guns every day -- and that might be true, since there appears to be a constant battle between guerrilla forces and the Colombian Army. While Marina and Jairo are stopped on a mountain road during one such battle, one spectator pays Jairo for a Polaroid to commemorate his first ambush. It is a completely absurd scenario. But, then again, so is the endless violence.

Portraits in a Sea of Lies won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 14th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival.