New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2014

[Chris Knipp]

ALEJANDRO FERNÁNDEZ ALMENDRAS: TO KILL A MAN (2014)--ND/NF


DANIEL CANDIA IN TO KILL A MAN

Points of no return

To Kill a Man-- the title gives away the climax -- is a slow-burning, cooly observational neorealist Latin American revenge story whose beleaguered‎, emasculated pater familias winds up murdering a brutal ghetto tormenter who claims just to be a "prankster." Guy Lodge of Variety suggested this film has links to Pablo Laraín's films (Almendras like Larraín being Chilean) -- presumably their creepiness and moral ambiguity, but Almendras' method is more meandering and dogged, with a bare-bones mise-en-scene and a straight-on middle distance camera that makes every facade and interior look equally drab and khaki. A story that might be mind-bending and suspenseful if told by Patricia Highsmith winds up being numbing and sickening. But no doubt amateur killers often do such things in these kinds of agonizing dragged out clumsy ways. And no doubt though the storytelling here is unsatisfying and opaque, that's the way, in the interests of realism, Almendras means it to be. What the film is good at showing is how people become trapped in their actions. And a trap is, well, something you can't get out of no matter what you do.

Jorge (Daniel Candia) is a tranquil, middle-class family man who's a diabetic with a shrewish wife, a son, and a daughter, who live near the projects. He works as a maintenance man at a distant research project and comes home tired every night on the train. Some of the local toughs menace him one such evening as he returns with groceries ordered by his wife, and rummage through his pockets and steal his insulin needle. From then on war begins. His son Jorgito (Ariel Mateluna) goes over to retaliate and is shot by the leader of the ghetto men (the only one who stays in the picture), who shoots himself to make it look like he fired in self defense. Jorge's wife Marta (Alexandra Yanez) blames him for all this: Jorge's manhood is challenged from all sides. The tough, known as Kalule (Daniel Antivilo) goes to jail for a year and a half, and then when out again, steps up his intimidation. By this time Jorge and Marta are no longer together, though they remain in contact. Finally when Kalule assaults and sexually menaces Jorge's daughter despite a restraining order -- after much bureaucratic stalling by police -- has been issued against him, Jorge gets serous.

He has a rifle at work to defend the property he maintains; we see he will use it when a camper refuses to remove his fire. He takes the rifle to the projects and lures Kalule out by setting off the alarm on his car, then forces him into the refrigerator truck his son operates. Kalule begs to be let out, shouting a mixture of pleading and curses that gradually turns to vicious threats. Heedless, Jorge drives the truck far out of town. After he has done away with Kalule, after teasing and tormenting him a bit, it is we, the audience who are teased and tormented, perhaps, as Jorge seems unclear about what to do with the body. Eventually, it appears that guilt overcomes him, and he is already a suspect and has been visited by police at work. Despite Almendras' relentlessly undramatic method, the post-murder atmosphere created by following a killer as events gang up on him still has some of the classic edge. But Jorge is a blank protagonist whom one may despise as well as pity and cannot ultimately sympathize with -- or even have much of a sense of. The music, heavy on the loud, eerie woodwinds, helps awaken a thriller vibe -- but seem to go agains the low -keyed style of everything else.

To Kill a Man/Matar a un hombre, 82 mins., debuted at Sundance Jan. 2014, also showing at Rotterdam. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC-MoMA series, New Directors/New Films, March 2014. A Film Movement release. ND/NF showings: Thursday, March 20, 6:30pm – FSLC; Sunday, March 23, 3:30pm – MoMA.