Review by Stuart Barr
Post Tenebras Lux release date 22nd March
cert (18)
director Carlos Reygadas writer Carlos Reygadas starring Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo Willebaldo Torres
44
MARCH 2013 VERITE
Post Tenebras Lux comes with a certain pedigree. Director Reygadas established his reputation with previous pictures Japón (2002), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007) and his latest won the best director award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Despite (or perhaps because of ) this Post Tenebras Lux may be among the most obscure films ever made. It begins strongly. A lone child wanders through a field, surrounded by dogs and cattle, against a dramatic backdrop of cliffs and forest. Who is this child? Why is she alone? Suddenly the sky darkens, lightning flashes and thunder follows. The child calls out ‘Mama’. The dogs run past again. As a prologue it is both lyrical and sinister. After this striking opening a sort of narrative develops around an upper-middle class Mexican family. Juan and Natalia (Castro and Acevedo) live in a lush rural area with their two children. Their large house and garden is tended to by workingclass labourers who live nearby in a shack. The couple are having issues, Juan is addicted to internet porn (although we see no evidence of this) and beats his favourite dog (not a euphemism) and Natalia appears listless, possibly depressed. The film plays out as a series of vignettes. Juan is taken to an AA meeting. The couple go on a swingers holiday which strays into uncomfortably graphic and specialist top-shelf territory. They go to a bar with ‘common people’ and Natalia gets sniffy. Intercut with this loose narrative are (seemingly) random scenes of an English high-school rugby match and a guy taking some kids duck hunting. There’s also a glowing nocturnal demon that appears when the family are asleep and wanders through the house carrying a toolbox. It’s hard to judge the performances in Post Tenebras Lux. The oblique framing of scenes means actors are often outside the frame. Both performers are adequate in their roles but too little is revealed of Juan and Natalia to make their characters particularly interesting. Aesthetically the film is stylish and carefully composed in the 1.33.1 aspect ratio. Takes are long with few cuts. This means events are often occurring just out of frame. A distorting lens is used for many scenes that give a ‘tunnel vision’ effect, shattering and refracting the image at the edges of the screen. The effect puts one in mind of the passage in Corinthians – ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly’ – but, as with so much here, it is hard to grasp a point to the technique. While individual scenes and passages of the film are fascinating, Post Tenebras Lux never coheres into a satisfying whole. Apparently the film is autobiographical – Reygadas was educated in England and played rugby – but you wouldn’t know this without doing some internet research. The title translates literally as ‘after darkness light’. While there’s plenty of darkness on display the promise of a moment of illumination is never realised and the film ultimately fades into a gloomy fog of ambiguity.