LFF Review: Patagonia

UK

directed by Marc Evans; written by Laurence Coriat and Marc Evans; starring Matthew Rhys, Nia Roberts, Marta Lubos, Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Matthew Gravelle, Duffy

screened on September 21st, 22nd and 23rd

C-
A truck rolls by, a faded name on its side. ‘Patagonia’. Perhaps once a tourist spot, but the guide driving his rusting truck only has these two visitors to look after, so it seems business is as faded as the emblazoned word and the dusty desert plains they wander around. This could, quite easily, simply be Argentina, though perhaps that lack of distinction is the implication in the barely-there advertisement. But it’s unlikely, no, that a film would name itself after something so intriguing and then barely engage with it? For the soap-opera dynamics of the half of Patagonia that actually takes place in Patagonia don’t have any need to be there at all, although I doubt they’d be much more engaging in California or Siberia than they are here. Rhys’ (Matthew Gravelle) actual interest in the architecture of the churches he’s been assigned to photograph is part and parcel of why his girlfriend Gwen (Nia Roberts) engages far too deeply in her flirtation with their guide (Matthew Rhys, not very rugged at all). Gwen is never at home here, and, despite the mistakes she makes, the film never suggests a disagreement with this. Wales is, as for Gwen, where Cerys (Marta Lubos) feels she should be as her life nears its end – so Patagonia, then, is for all not somewhere they are truly happy.

Rather curiously sheathed in half, with two plots that are cleanly unrelated, the film swerves between Patagonia and Wales without much rhyme or reason. The more dominant – and naturally, less interesting – half is drawn rather tiredly in Babel-like colours, from the dusty golden glow of the cinematography to the august plucking of the score, and there isn’t much sense of Patagonia as a place distinct from any of the rest of South America, except that the characters – two of whom are visitors – speak in Welsh. Showing the disconnect that should likely be the point of the film, the characters in Wales speak in Spanish, though this plot is played much more heavily for the cultural tension. Though she provides the inevitably poignant climax, Cerys is mostly an excuse for the coming-of-age arc given to Alejandro (Nahuel Perez Biscayart), though his encounters with European tourists, loutish locals and a sweet Welsh student (Duffy) are hardly the most narratively sharp of experiences.

The film seems to be commenting on Patagonia’s status as more a beautiful artefact than a country in the way it interpolates the flashes and exposures of Rhys’ camera, and its emulation of his painterly shots. But as the soap-opera dynamics crowd the film and Wales is inevitably depicted as a rosy, pastoral landscape, any deeper angles that have been vaguely suggested are shunted aside. By reducing its characters to such familiar arcs, the film can’t give them any more than a superficial depth, and generally isn’t interested in engaging them with the histories of the foreign worlds they engage with. The brief hints of something more specific that we are given make the film’s overall disinterest even more maddening – there are stories here being ignored, snubbed for ones that have probably been written during a deep sleep. Often a failure is more catastrophic when the target aimed at was never high enough in the first place.

The Poetry of War

Contains spoilers.

Should a film try to approximate other arts? Watching The Edge of Love sent me momentarily back to 2005 and the poetry-on-film double-whammy of Sally Potter's Yes- which was literally told via poetry- and Terrence Malick's marvellous The New World, which I said at the time was the closest thing to visual poetry film had ever come. The question of poetry comes up in relation to The Edge of Love because it ostensibly centres around a poet, Dylan Thomas (here played by Matthew Rhys). Director John Maybury doesn't seem to be- unlike Malick and Potter- making this story into any kind of poem, and indeed, the use of Thomas' words is surprisingly sparing and generally aptly-placed. But in the way that poetry- at least in the vein of Thomas' work- uses words and imagery to mean something other, so does Maybury approach the story of Thomas' entwinement with two women: his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller) and his childhood sweetheart Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley).

What I mean is that this is a story about images and the falsity they create and present. The Edge of Love has four central characters- our additional one being Vera's eventual husband William Killick (Cillian Murphy)- and it ultimately proves not to have a romanticized view of any of them. But their descent into disarray and unhappiness occurs because, in the midst of the panicked, suspended existence that WWII brought, these are four people that don't really know each other at all. The film's first half is full of laughter between bombings, suggestive trios on a bed and cigarettes passed between the women wearing gauzy bohemian clothing. But all this jollity is emblematic of people who are, by necessity of the situation surrounding them (the war), ignoring interpersonal problems. Thomas kind of gets sidelined here because the picture's true 'love story' is actually between the two women- the two characters who, perhaps naturally, understand each other the best, and indeed, it is the breakdown in their trust that spins the two couples away from each other in the end.

The question of who is centralized in this story is both fascinating and perhaps completely irrelevant. Miller and Knightley dominate both press coverage and the posters; but in terms of the thematizing of imagery and poetry, it is perhaps Dylan and Vera's picture. His poetry, when it appears, dominates the soundtrack by blocking out diegetic sound; but this is similar to the repeated occurrences of Vera's underground singing performances, where Maybury focuses his camera close up and square on her, the cinematography misty and gauzy like nowhere else, making her (rather vocally pedestrian) performance central to our understanding of Vera, where otherwise it would have been a momentary distraction. Vera is, if you want, our heroine, and her singing is the way she has forged an identity, which is then squashed by William's insistence on their rushed marriage, and the ultimate requirement of motherhood. The rather damp conclusion is staunchly melancholic- Vera says goodbye to Caitlin across the bonnet of a car, implicitly including Dylan in her goodbye because the Thomas's were her only way to retain her freedom.

All this is to say nothing of how well The Edge of Love achieves these impactful themes. At one point, the thought flashed through my mind that this was kind of like a poem, because the story seemed so loose and the images so translucent that it was not so much a linear narrative as a circulating, elliptical mystery. This is, perhaps, a fitting description for most of the first half, but the move to Wales loses both the visual beauty and the elusivity of the narrative, and becomes more drab and wearing as the characters slip into unhappiness. Knightley, too, gets lost in the second half, her mixture of Vera as pointed yet vulnerable falling into a glut of glum facial expressions and a ripe Welsh accent that basically shouts 'fake' at the top of its voice. Rhys, though, retains the charming arrogance that makes Thomas so hatefully fascinating, and best of all, Miller continues to justify my championing of her by making Caitlin's wilful, acidic personality become slowly eroded by confused, hypocritical misunderstanding. To say little of Maybury- whose direction becomes gradually more unfocused- is perhaps apt, because this is an actor's film that gives its performers the task of unlocking characters trapped behind romanticized or otherwise false images of each other, kept at the edge of love by lack of communication. B-