REVIEWS
November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 75
near their base, the teenagers giggle and sway,
while Wolf and Lady’s sloppy kisses are captured
in all their adolescent awkwardness. Increasingly,
the viewer is given the sense of teenagers out of
their depth, unable to control the guns that they
treat like toys, their extreme physical environment
or the American prisoner who outwits them.
They may be terrified of the situation they find
themselves in – the focus that Jasper Wolf’s camera
places on their eyes betrays their fear – but also,
as in Lord of the Flies, as a pack they are capable of
malice, cruelty and sadism. Indeed, the pig’s head
on a stick that features in Monos appears to be a
direct homage to William Golding’s 1954 novel.
Bigfoot going rogue echoes the savage Kurtz
in Apocalypse Now (1979). Julianne Nicholson’s
captive Doctor – an emaciated, nervy figure –
trembles with fear at the different situations she
is forced to enact. This is a world where teenagers
have to ask permission to embark on sexual
relationships, and where punishment is meted
out for any transgression. Escaping into the jungle,
Doctor battles mosquitoes that cut into her face,
and mudslides that curb her mobility. Mica Levi
(Under the Skin, Jackie) provides a scratchy score,
in which the sounds of the jungle fuse with
the music’s eerie percussive edge, accentuating
the sense of entrapment and foreboding.
Monos is one of the year’s most extraordinary
films. Its feverish visuals rupture any sense of
surface realism, creating a disarming, almost
surrealist universe where anarchy takes hold.
The action sequences – including a dangerous
chase in the jungle’s rapids – and morbid humour
(there’s an amusing clip of a television feature
on Bonn’s gummy bears factory) ensure that
the tone remains hard to predict. The ghosts
of a political situation that is never articulated
hover over a narrative whose mysteries remain,
right up to the film’s final moments.
Young guns: Moisés Arias
A Latin American country, probably present day. In a
remote mountainous area, a unit of teenage soldiers are
trained by a drill commander known as Messenger. The
teenagers – Dog, Wolf, Lady, Swede, Smurf, Boom Boom,
Bigfoot and Rambo – have been entrusted with watching
over an American woman, known as Doctor, an engineer
who has been kidnapped. Messenger brings them a cow
to milk, and entrusts them to use a radio to communicate
with their superiors. Following Messenger’s departure,
Dog accidentally kills the cow; Wolf kills himself in shame
for having allowed it to happen on his watch. Bigfoot
is appointed commander of the unit. After surviving
an ambush, the teenagers are ordered to head into
the jungle, where Doctor runs away. Recaptured, she
is chained to prevent further escape. Urging unilateral
action, Bigfoot shoots Messenger when the latter visits
to find out why the unit has been out of touch. Doctor
escapes after killing Swede, and the news of this soon
circulates through the media. Rambo too runs away. The
family who take her in are ambushed by Bigfoot, Lady
and Dog. Rambo escapes by jumping into the rapids. She
is washed up on a shore and rescued by a helicopter.
Produced by
Alejandro Landes
Fernando Epstein
Producers
Santiago Zapata
Cristina Landes
Script
Alejandro Landes
Alexis Dos Santos
Story
Alejandro Landes
Cinematography
Jasper Wolf
Edited by
Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Ted Guard
Santiago Otheguy
Production Design
Daniela Schneider
Original Music
Mica Levi
Sound Recorders
Lena Ezquenazi
Javier Umpierrez
Wardrobe
Johanna Buendía
Daniela Schneider
Production
Companies
Le Pacte presents
a production of
Stela Cine, Caracol
Televisión, Dago
García Producciones,
CineColombia,
Dynamo, Ministerio de
Cultura Proimágenes
- Colombia, Lemming
Film, Campo Cine,
Pandora, Snowglobe,
Film I Väst, Mutante
Cine, Pando, Bord
Cadre Films, EFD
Colombia, INCAA -
Instituto Nacional
de Cine y Artes
Audiovisuales, Cine
Argentino, Programa
Ibermedia, World
Cinema Fund, Film-
und Medienstiftung
NRW, Netherlands
Film Fund,
Hubert Bals Fund
(International Film
Festival Rotterdam) +
Europe Coproduction
Support
Executive Producers
Jorge Iragorri
Andrés Calderón
Gloria María Restrepo
Gustavo Pazmín Perea
Josef Rebalski
Charles De Viel Castel
Duke Merriman
J.C. Chandor
Cast
Sofía Buenaventura
Rambo
Julián Giraldo
Lobo, ‘Wolf’
Karen Quintero
Leidi, ‘Lady’
Laura Castrillón
Sueca, ‘Swede’
Deibi Rueda
Pitufo, ‘Smurf’
Paul Cubides
Perro, ‘Dog’
Sneider Castro
Bum Bum,
‘Boom Boom’
Moisés Arias
Patagrande, ‘Bigfoot’
Julianne Nicholson
doctor
Wilson Salazar
messenger
Jorge Román
gold prospector
Valeria Solomonoff
journalist
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Subtitles
Distributor
Picturehouse
Entertainment
Credits and Synopsis
Reviewed by Hannah McGill
So inescapably juicy is the life story of the
Australian rock musician Michael Hutchence
- the fame, the glitzy girlfriends, the troubled
family, the lonely and much mythologised
death – that the avoidance of prurience would
seem an almost insurmountable challenge to a
documentary about him. While this study by
Richard Lowenstein contains plenty of catnip
for gossips, including intimate footage of the
aforementioned celebrity partners and new
theories about Hutchence’s final depression, it
nimbly avoids tawdriness. Interviewees are given
space to air memories and impressions, rather
than being mined for provocative soundbites;
clashing perspectives sit side by side; lurid
speculation is avoided. Interviews are sound only,
played over home movies and archive footage,
in the style of Asif Kapadia’s films on Ayrton
Senna, Amy Winehouse and Diego Maradona.
This approach from Lowenstein – who helmed
several videos for Hutchence’s band, INXS, as
well as one of the singer’s few cinematic outings,
Dogs in Space (1986) – can feel overly open-ended.
Hutchence’s mother Patricia describes how
she separated her two sons during her divorce
from their father, and the devastating effect on
Michael’s brother Rhett, but not why she did
so. The claim that a head injury in 1992 did far
more than rob Hutchence of his sense of smell
and taste is compelling, but under-explained.
And those to whom INXS was more than a
frame around Hutchence may be annoyed by
the glancing attention to their actual music.
Other aspects of Hutchence’s life, however,
receive fuller attention. If it’s common for
biographical portraits of famous men to
sideline the women in their lives, presenting
them as drains on the subject’s creativity, perks
of his success or just ill-defined background
figures, Mystify decisively emphasises the
significance and influence of Hutchence’s
romantic partners. His expectations were
high, his passions intense and his break-ups
agonising. The gap between fantasy and reality
is neatly exposed in an interview clip in which
he tersely explains that it’s over between him
and the subject of his hit ‘Never Tear Us Apart’.
In this footage as elsewhere, Hutchence
appears far from macho: he seems nervy, solemn
and somewhat delicate. Correspondingly,
his relationships come across not as the
Mystify:
Michael Hutchence
Australia/United Kingdom 2019
Director: Richard Lowenstein, Certificate 15 101m 55s
Michael Hutchence, Helena Christensen
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 18
