In 2000, Lisandro Alonso presented the world his unique narrative style, coming up with “La libertad”. From this moment on to “Liverpool” (2008), which is being exhibited in Rotterdam’s Spectrum section), the Argentinean director got specialized in his own kind of character-driven cinema that, with this last movie, seems to have reached a wastage point.
An unconditional fan of misfit types and of the construction of a reality that resists fiction, Alonso puts his camera in the life of average people wishing it wasn’t there. He gives up mostly sounds and tracks, telling it all through silence and, during apparently insignificant minutes (which are actually very heavy, for the weight all characters seem to carry or for the landscape that doesn’t welcome anybody, pushing away any psychological interpretations), make us get used to his characters. But then he – or his camera – follows another way, interested in environment, in others, in anything. Or in everything what he, Lisandro, wishes to say.
The thing is that, in this anti-narrative movie game, the search for identification doesn’t stay aside, even if he wants to. For this misfit guys, Alonso hopes for proximity. So it is, that he gives us information on Farrel, the main character in “Liverpool” through the mouths of other characters. More than he has ever done with his previous movies, as if his previously mentioned style were draining to the last drops.
This is what I felt here in Rotterdam, during a press screening of the movie: the spectator that accepts Lisandro Alonso’s cinema hopes, anyway, to get closer not only to his characters, but to him as a director, trying to like what they saw. My fellow journalists, for example, risked some reactions of anxiety during the movie, like little laughers and suspiration, mostly in cuts from one scene to the other, when some change in the situation created new expectations.
And in the final shot, when a character finds a key ring with the word “Liverpool” sculpted in metal, explaining the title, they let out the final loud breath meaning “Is he going to end the movie here?”. Yes, he will. And he did, showing that what he does is what he wants to do. In this dynamics, I confess, I get sometimes a little lost, like some of my colleagues. I wanna like Alonso, but I don´t know if I can.
On this video published in You Tube, Alonso talks about “Liverpool” and the kind of cinema he is interested in (in Spanish):
By Camila Moraes (trainee in Rotterdam's Proyect for Young Film Critics)
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