House Broken
Alicia is helpless. Traumatizing war memories invade her mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted from her destroyed village by the armed conflict, Alicia tries to start a new life in La Sirga, a dilapid…
House Broken
Alicia is helpless. Traumatizing war memories invade her mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted from her destroyed village by the armed conflict, Alicia tries to start a new life in La Sirga, a dilapidated hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes. The place belongs to Oscar, her only surviving relative. There, on a swampy and murky beach, she will try to settle down until her fears and the threat of war resurface again. "La Sirga" translates to "Towpath" in English. Fleeing from an vaguely explained war that has destroyed her village and decimated her family, 19-year-old Alicia (Joghis Seudyn Arias) arrives at the ramshackle lakeside guest house run by her middle-aged uncle Oscar (Julio Cesar Robles). He reluctantly offers her shelter, recruiting her to help with renovating the houses rickety wooden framework in preparation for tourists that never come. The sleepwalking Alicia soon becomes a focus of sexual interest among the local menfolk. Both Oscar and his adult son Freddy (Heraldo Romero), who returns home with mysterious injuries and murky intentions following a long absence, spy on her at night. A co-production between Colombia, Mexico and France, La Sirga is an elliptical portrait of life on the fringes of a low-level war. Director William Vega never contextualizes the violence that hovers just out of shot, besides glancingly opaque allusions to Colombias long-running, drug-fuelled guerrilla conflict. However, this purgatorial setting could just as easy be a timeless post-apocalyptic wasteland straight out of a Tarkovksy or Beckett. Indeed, Tarkovksy is a clear influence on Vegas spare shooting style, framing these waterlogged landscapes and crumbling wooden shacks with a chilly film-school formalism that is impeccably elegant but also stiff and outdated. Punctuated by a constant rhythmic backbeat of creaking wood, rustling wind and hammering rainfall, La Sirga is essentially a disjointed collage of stark sound effects and strikingly composed images. There may be an engaging human story buried in here somewhere, but the film-makers prefer to keep it maddeningly cryptic. Vegas mastery of old-school arthouse technique is impressive. But much like Alicia, any viewers hoping to be informed or entertained may end up sleepwalking to the concession stand.
House Broken
Comedy
Film Details
Alicia is helpless. Traumatizing war memories invade her mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted from her destroyed village by the armed conflict, Alicia tries to start a new life in La Sirga, a dilapidated hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes.
The place belongs to Oscar, her only surviving relative. There, on a swampy and murky beach, she will try to settle down until her fears and the threat of war resurface again. "La Sirga" translates to "Towpath" in English.
Fleeing from an vaguely explained war that has destroyed her village and decimated her family, 19-year-old Alicia (Joghis Seudyn Arias) arrives at the ramshackle lakeside guest house run by her middle-aged uncle Oscar (Julio Cesar Robles). He reluctantly offers her shelter, recruiting her to help with renovating the houses rickety wooden framework in preparation for tourists that never come. The sleepwalking Alicia soon becomes a focus of sexual interest among the local menfolk.
Both Oscar and his adult son Freddy (Heraldo Romero), who returns home with mysterious injuries and murky intentions following a long absence, spy on her at night. A co-production between Colombia, Mexico and France, La Sirga is an elliptical portrait of life on the fringes of a low-level war. Director William Vega never contextualizes the violence that hovers just out of shot, besides glancingly opaque allusions to Colombias long-running, drug-fuelled guerrilla conflict.
However, this purgatorial setting could just as easy be a timeless post-apocalyptic wasteland straight out of a Tarkovksy or Beckett. Indeed, Tarkovksy is a clear influence on Vegas spare shooting style, framing these waterlogged landscapes and crumbling wooden shacks with a chilly film-school formalism that is impeccably elegant but also stiff and outdated. Punctuated by a constant rhythmic backbeat of creaking wood, rustling wind and hammering rainfall, La Sirga is essentially a disjointed collage of stark sound effects and strikingly composed images.
There may be an engaging human story buried in here somewhere, but the film-makers prefer to keep it maddeningly cryptic. Vegas mastery of old-school arthouse technique is impressive. But much like Alicia, any viewers hoping to be informed or entertained may end up sleepwalking to the concession stand..