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    “ Although you don't attempt to show it, one has a point of view on things and it ends up emerging, whether you like it or not. Our films (with director/husband Rodrigo Plá) often turn on the limits of the public and the private, the individual confronting the state, and what happens when that individual is defenceless... The state of helplessness is one of the motors of what we write. Regarding why we often portray female characters, I think the question is really: Why don't other people portray them more?” ---Original screenplay-writer and co-director Laura Santullo, on her script for her husband’s earlier work  A Monster with a Thousand Heads (2015), a quotation equally applicable to  The Other Tom (2021), where finally she is not merely the scriptwriter for her husband’s six films but credited as the official co-director. R odrigo Plá (an Uruguayan) and Laura Santullo (a Mexican) are a rare husband-wife team making remarkable low-budget films, often with n...

    My goal is to observe life and not to mystify it. What I film is simply matter that exists in the world. A person or object may have a particular meaning within the context of the film but I don’t see them as having an inherent conceptual identity. If I say the word ‘tree’, you don’t necessarily need to see the tree because you have learned since you were a child how to conceptualize the tree. In most narrative films, things—whether it’s a bird, a human body, a cloud, a car or a sound—exist as devices that only serve to tell a story. This is true for the actors as well. These types of films do not allow the viewer to see the actors as people existing in the world. Instead, the viewer sees a mask moving around in a costume and wearing lots of make-up. My goal is to bring out the individuality of each person or object and to capture something of their essence. I’m not interested in filming the mask. This is why you see the particular bodies in the films. If they are not...

An evocative poster of the film at the Berlin Film Festival The conventional poster U ruguay is not a country that one would easily associate with great cinema.  Even for Latin American standards, Uruguay cannot boast of major cinematic works.  And yet, Rodrigo Plá’s La demora (The Delay) offers without any doubt a major Uruguayan contemporary counterpoint to Michael Haneke’s Amour (Love), both films made in the same year, both major winners on the film festival circuit, both offering quality cinema that will grip the viewer right up to the end. While Amour dealt with uxorial love, The Delay is all about paternal love. Both films deal with the problems of the elder citizens today. While Amour dealt with the problem within the economic comforts of a small Parisian apartment where the principal characters could afford hospitalization, home nurses, a baby grand piano, a good music system, and a concierge to buy groceries, The Delay pushes the viewer to the bitter re...

C arlos Reygadas is one of the few exhilarating filmmakers alive and actively making movies.  His films are never easy viewing.  His films’ images and his films’ soundtrack stun your senses with their groundbreaking ability to make you wonder why other filmmakers did not employ those ideas before.  Then he goads the viewer to reflect and figure out how best to solve the puzzle he has presented on screen. Post Tenebras Lux does just that. It can either elicit your boos or it can open the viewer’s mind’s eye wide in awe. The film won the award best director at the Cannes Film Festival 2012  For this critic, the film is the only film made in 2012 to find a slot on his list of all time 100 best films. If we deconstruct the movie Post Tenebras Lux, the viewer could perhaps begin to appreciate it. Rut Reygadas as Rut, daughter of Juan F irst, the film is not based on any novel or play—it is the original idea of Carlos Reygadas, scriptwriter and director.  Now when a...