LAFF 2014: LAKE LOS ANGELES

Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) in Lake Los Angeles.

Dusts in the wind

By Miranda Inganni

Set in the desolate high desert of California’s Antelope Valley, Lake Los Angeles is a story of struggle and survival for two incongruous, but quietly complementary characters.

Francisco (Roberto Sanchez) is a Cuban immigrant long since distanced from his wife and family. When he is not doing various day labor jobs and writing poetic love letters to his wife, he uses his house as a temporary holding place for immigrants crossing into the US from Mexico. One such person is young Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) whose mother has purchased her passage with a promise that her father will collect her upon her arrival.

Things do not go according to plan on these vast arid plains pricked with Joshua trees and littered with abandoned houses.

Francisco and Cecilia both came to this land in search, or with a promise, of something better, only to face disappointment. Cecilia’s promised life with a father who she has never met is turned topsy-turvy when she, in a sudden act of self-preservation, runs off into the expansive desert. To keep herself occupied and comforted, she whispers stories, legends she has heard, to an imaginary friend as she wanders in search of her father, any father – a little girl lost in an expanse of grit.

Directed by Mike Ott and written by Ott and Atsuko Okatsuka, Lake Los Angeles uses the location almost as another character. The area drives the actors to various actions. It elicits a practically palpable, desperate dryness that gets into everything and sets the tone carried throughout the enjoyable film.

LAFF 2013: PURGATORIO

A scene from Purgatorio.

Over theirs

By John Esther

Two men stand outside a large fence waiting for the right time to climb over, leaving a family behind. Another man leaves water for those who have made it over the fence while another man goes around picking up what he thinks are clues for people who have crossed the border unannounced. Others are imprisoned by drugs, violence and vengeful fantasies. Borders as large prisons.  

Bullets litter automobiles, kill three policemen, and a local drug dealer. Deadly currency. Automobiles, planes and buildings rust in the dessert sun. Scrapyards of paradise lost. (Forever?)

Drug gangs rule the land, abandoned dogs roam the land while others just run to wreck it. To be sure, a few good men and women remain, but the ugly weight of a divine comedy has turned into a human tragedy. It is hard to strive when one can barely survive.

These are ideas, attitudes and illustrations of Rodrigo Reyes' Purgatorio: A Journey Into the Heart of the Border. An intellectually impressive and refreshingly angry documentary -- which also happens to be the best thing I have seen at LAFF 2013 hitherto -- Reyes moves around an undisclosed part of the Mexican-U.S. border casting his eyes toward unnamed men and women beaten by the system while lending his ears to people who have not been beaten by the system, yet.

Between the interviews, Justin Chin's cinematography captures the haunting landscape where our "hero" shakes his tongue, trying to find salvation in a cold and indifferent universe. If this is purgatory, how can the inferno be worse?

Highly recommended.


Purgatorio screens at the Los Angeles Festival June 20, 7 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Purgatorio at LAFF 2013.

DVD REVIEW: ILLEGAL

A scene from Illégal.

Belgium ail

By Don Simpson

A former French teacher in Russia, Tania (Anne Coesens), and her son, Ivan (Alexandre Gontcharov), have come to live in Belgium as illegal immigrants. Tania must rely on her corrupt landlord, Mr. Nowak (Tomasz Bialkowski), to provide her with an apartment as well as forged documents so that she can work as a janitor.

Tania knows that this charade will not last forever but continues to hold on to the hope that the Belgian government will approve her request for permanent residence. When Tania receives the letter from the Belgian government officially declining her request, she drowns her sorrows in vodka -- the vodka serves a dual purpose of dulling the pain as she subsequently burns her fingerprints off with an iron (an act that serves as a clue to the audience that Tania knows that her arrest is imminent).

It is not much longer before Tania is captured by the police and imprisoned in a holding facility for illegal immigrants. Ivan is kept free and safe by Tania’s friend, Zina (Olga Zhdanova). Unwilling to divulge her true identity -- to avoid deportation and to keep Ivan safe -- Tania attempts to navigate her way back to Ivan and freedom.

Recently Belgium's Oscar entry for Best Film in a Foreign Language, it is not without irony that Film Movement scheduled the DVD release of Illégal the day after Independence Day in the United States, as writer-director Olivier Masset-Depasse’s film presents an age old international dilemma that continues to strip human beings of their personal freedoms. Unfortunately, Masset-Depasse’s only explanation of why we should discontinue the jailing of innocent people -- who are merely performing their integral yet unsatisfying and grossly underpaid roles in the capitalist system -- is the ridiculous over-zealousness of the government officials in chasing down and punishing undocumented immigrants. By not offering any justification for Tania’s move from Russia -- where she was presumably well-educated and adequately employed as a teacher -- to Belgium -- where she is forced to the bottom of the employment pool -- Masset-Depasse fails to convince us why Tania should be granted the Belgian residence papers that she hopelessly desires. In his failure to effectively explain Tania’s situation, Masset-Depasse seems to be suggesting that anyone should be able to live and work anywhere in the world -- an extreme and overly idealistic suggestion that could only work if we were living in a Utopian fantasy world. Under our current economic environment, this solution is totally unfeasible.

Masset-Depasse sacrifices a fruitful discussion on immigration issues in lieu of a profound feminist manifesto in which he focuses on the masculinity of the government officials and the femininity of the captives. Tania is a woman helplessly struggling to survive in an oppressive world ruled by violent and fear-mongering men. The women whom Tania encounters -- including a few female guards -- are incredibly supportive and helpful, while the men are all close-minded and one-dimensional. It is also not without purpose that Ivan is, for all intents and purposes, fatherless. Being raised solely by women provides Ivan with the hope of developing into a well-rounded and sympathetic human being, rather than an angry and pigheaded man.