“Antier Noche” is a trance in the middle of nowhere
Published: Thursday, Mar 14th 2024, 11:50
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In his feature film debut, Alberto Martín Menacho accompanies four young people caught between tradition and modernity. "Antier Noche" is a poetic journey to southern Spain - and to oneself.
Juan Francisco Cambero Domínguez lets his hair grow. It is a symbolic gesture, as he says, his grandmother died of cancer, Juan Francisco let his grow when hers began to fall out. His grandfather also had long hair when he was young.
The opening to "Antier Noche" is already characterized by a melancholy and sadness that will permeate the entire film. And of beauty. The feature film debut of Alberto Martín Menacho is a declaration of love to life. To the simple life that takes its course, filled to the brim with soft colors.
"Antier Noche" is a documentary film, seemingly calm and almost a little deliberate. Nevertheless, there is a plot, the film picks up speed quickly and you immediately find yourself back in the southern Spanish village ("small town", says Juan Francisco), surrounded by thousand-year-old oak trees and solar panels. It is also the story of Santi, who is working on her first track while Antonio looks after his animals. Pepa is a young mother who works as a seasonal worker in a slaughterhouse. The insight into the lives of these young people shows a country where hares and donkeys (and sometimes a stray dog!) say "Good night!", a place of love stories, forest fires and rave parties. Sometimes people bathe in the river and sit around on large stones rounded by the water.
A beautiful, bare world
This cinematic jewel, often bathed in pastel colors and full of contrasts, is not a low-threshold film. In fact, you have to get involved, want to get involved, in this bleak world in which people sometimes sit there like Playmobil figures. You sense more than see that everything is closely connected: people, animals, work, leisure, life and death. You have to get involved with the rifle that Juan Francisco has inherited and with which he shoots at sardine cans for minutes on end. You may also have to study jacket patterns, or the monotonous indentations on the walls, or watch the hare hobble. But once you're inside this world, you get all woozy. It's that beautiful.
"Antier Noche", says Alberto Martín Menacho, "an expression I often heard my grandmother use. It refers to an event that took place the night before last. It's an old expression." His film, he says, was born out of a desire to make films in a "forgotten corner of the world", in Extremadura. "In a region that I love deeply." Since his childhood, he has traveled to Salvaleón, his home town, a small, hidden place in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The director grew up in Madrid - and emigrated to Geneva around ten years ago. He describes his film as a "sociological fairy tale about cultural heritage in a rural environment", among other things.
Fairytale-like images and stark contrasts
The poetic images are fairytale-like. They thrive on complementary colors on the one hand and on contrasts in general. Always bathed in a warm, round light, "Antier Noche" captures the inner turmoil of the protagonists seemingly effortlessly. Even at the rave, in love, lonely or simply dancing, they still radiate a serenity that makes the viewer envy them. However, polarity is not only to be found in the color tones and in the souls of the young people.
Logically, the plot, if you like, is also characterized by contrasts. One moment there is a donkey in the field, laden with cork leaves from cork oaks, nothing else, insects can be heard, the grass dances in the hot wind. The next moment there is real dancing, lights flash, flicker, the bass is monotonous, the young bodies twitch, patterns and sounds overlap and chase each other in the track.
It's a kind of trance, it runs through the whole movie, and it opens hearts.
*This text by Nina Kobelt, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
©Keystone/SDA
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