Rafa Cortes, 2007
What with some degree of mystery – or at least the presence of some - being integral to any film’s plot machinations, the evil called the Thriller is often left ambiguously bounded.
Who is our protagonist? Why is he/she so happy/sad/dead? What next, Writer/Director? And what of what happened at the end, anyway? These kinds of questions form the basic fundamental inquiries required of any disbelief-suspending audience when encountering the requisite care-factor necessitated by narrative film-viewing. Hell, even the most didactic of experimental video art requires at least some inquiries into it’s abstract meaning, even if it is a question of said meaning’s existence. Either way, it’s a two-way street.
If you tell me things, I might listen. If you engage me in a dialogue of sorts, I may not even know I’m listening, let alone responding.
And so, as such, I say: any ‘thriller’ worth its twists needs to be at least a little cognisant of the somewhat arbitrary nature of the very mystery at its heart. It is in addressing this, and indeed many other things, that Rafa Cortes’ Yo – astonishingly only his debut feature – succeeds heartily. The most accomplished of this year’s Euro Debuts, this subtle yet almost overwhelmingly well-crafted identity caper boasts not only one of MIFF ’07’s most compelling faces in Alex Brendemuhl (moustached, here also co-scripting with Cortes), but also the most compelling yet ethereal narrative seen in a thriller in…well, a while.
Ethereal? Hmm. A better word…maybe intangible. Tenuous. From the opening sequence – Brendemuhl encountering stony-faced Mallorcans shooting him suspicious looks en route to his new groundskeeper gig – it seems increasingly likely that, amidst the sea of “who the fuck are you?”, his identity will be the evening’s proverbial onion. However, the actualisation of this puzzling inquiry is subtle, layered, and so incremental that one could indeed be forgiven for exiting the cinema without having solved anything! A true mystery!
Alas, this film has a very real and ultimately very resolved answer to its own inquiry into the nature of the blood and guts of human identity. Who are we? Who is “we”? Why do we think we are so? And how are we bounded to these identities? With Lynch’s Mulholland Drive - a definite and fully-aware Thriller in every sense - still exercising a mesmerising hypnosis over many a film-viewer’s attempts at resolute ’solution’* , it is indeed interesting to see a film posit such a deceptively simple and concrete answer to these questions of identity: we are who we are.
* Not this viewer, tho. Anyone seeking a complete and thorough evaluation of Naomi Watts’ Betty/Diane need only ask.**
**No, it’s not about aliens.
