From Afar

Armando is a man in his fifties in Caracas. He makes dentures and lives alone. He finds young men in the street, pays them and brings them home; but he does not touch them. He looks from a distance and pays for it. One day he meets Elder. The boy is seventeen, is in a gang, and beats him first. Then he comes back. A relationship begins and the order breaks; the distance Armando had built falls away. In the same period his father returns to the city. Lorenzo Vigas directs. Alfredo Castro plays Armando and Luis Silva plays Elder. It is a Venezuelan production. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is the director's first feature. The narrative explains very little; the characters' pasts are given in only a few sentences. The visual method builds the distance directly; the camera is often out of focus and the background blurred. The matter it works at is power; the relationship begins through money and its balance keeps shifting. Caracas is inside the narrative; the class division and the violence of the city stand constantly in the background. The ending is abrupt and unexplained; the narrative leaves no comment. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American art cinema and distanced narrative. Who it is not for: the subject is uncomfortable, the pace slow, and the characters unexplained.