Sight&Sound - 05.2020

(Jacob Rumans) #1
REVIEWS

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 69

Reviewed by Maria Delgado
Pablo Larraín’s filmography
has frequently revolved
around a damaged, destructive
masculinity that wreaks havoc
on the wider social landscape,
often embodied by Alfredo Castro: the murderous
disco-dancer of Tony Manero (2008), the slick
adman running a campaign for Pinochet in No
(2012), and the tormented priest in The Club
(2015). Before Ema, the only one of Larraín’s films
to focus on a woman was Jackie (2016) – Natalie
Portman’s Jackie Kennedy, tormented by grief and
anger as she crafts an image of her dead husband’s
‘court’ for posterity. Ema, the twentysomething
dancer at the centre of Larraín’s eighth film, has
none of Jackie’s poised self-control. She flashes
and burns, shocks and surprises; she disarms
through seduction and defiance. Ema’s volatile
energy is refracted through the film’s in-yer-face
neon language. In this respect the film has more in
common with the agitated, feverish Neruda (2016)
than with Larraín’s earlier, more clinical works.
When Ema is first encountered, she has just set
fire to a traffic light in the picturesque port town of
Valparaíso. The fire burns brightly, golden-orange
flames spreading to illuminate the night street.
Not a word has been spoken, but the impending
danger that Ema represents couldn’t be clearer.
She surveys the scene from a distance, dressed in
protective headgear with a flamethrower strapped
to her back. The sequences that follow provide
further indications of both Ema’s inscrutability
and her unwillingness to toe the line: she harasses
a social worker about the fate of Polo, the son she
adopted then rejected when his behaviour became
malicious and violent; she takes to the dance-
floor, in a thrilling performance; she engages in
bitter conversations with her on-off husband
Gastón. “I do what I want,” she warns him.
Ema’s encounters with Gastón are shaped by
a destructive co-dependence. He coolly accuses
her of having been a poor mother, she confronts
him with having destroyed her life. Larraín often
cuts between them as they torment each other
over responsibility for what happened with
Polo. Both have sexual relationships with others.
Though Ema accuses the older Gastón of having
taken advantage of her youth, it is Gastón who
emerges as infantilised. Dressed in dungarees,
he sometimes appears to be a giant baby, unable
or unwilling to grow up. He rants against the
reggaetón that Ema and her friends dance across
the city’s streets, rooftops, clubs and bars. In Gael
García Bernal’s dour performance, he is a Peter Pan
figure trapped in his own narcissistic creations
and frustrated when Ema doesn’t fall into place
like one of his impeccably realised dance works.
As Ema, Mariana Di Girolamo dominates the
film, whether it is performing a brash reggaetón
dance sequence on her lawyer’s desk in the hope
of procuring her services for free; dancing solo
against the aqua tones of Valparaíso’s spectacular
twilight skyline; seeking comfort in her mother’s
touch on a bus journey; or staring intently at
school teachers who dare to bring up Polo’s
disappearance from school. She flatters, flirts
with and confronts all those who ask questions
of her. Her voice is languid and probing. Her
anarchic behaviour is almost impossible to read.


Once again, Larraín plays games with genre: the
film begins as the portrait of a dysfunctional
marriage but there something thrillerish in Ema’s
relentless pursuit of her ‘disappeared’ son. Larraín
keeps the viewer guessing as to Polo’s motives,
whether he was a product of his parents’ toxic
marriage or whether there is a deeper malignant
problem requiring specialist attention.
Cutting from past to present, from the
consequences of Polo’s actions to Ema’s
machinations to locate his whereabouts, this is
a film that constructs a spiky dramatic structure
from the skewed overload in Ema’s head. Key
here are the effervescent dance sequences, with
bodies gyrating, pushing and pulling against
Nicolas Jaar’s pulsating score. Sergio Armstrong,

Larraín’s regular director of photography, weaves
his camera around the actors, creating a saturated
colour palette: purples at Ema’s friend Mati’s
home, as a pet cat is discovered in the freezer –
another of Polo’s destructive acts; the intense
reds of the stage lighting under which Gastón’s
company perform in an early electrifying dance
sequence; the electric blue of a montage of Ema’s
sexual encounters; the golden flames of a burning
playground as Ema poses for selfies with the girl
gang she recruits to assist with her devious plan.
“I teach freedom,” Ema says in a job interview,
and freedom is what this film delivers, both in Di
Girolamo’s invigorating performance and in the
exhilarating cocktail of colour and music that
Larraín deploys to give form to Ema’s journey.

Valparaíso, Chile, the present. Ema is a dancer with
her husband Gastón’s dance company. The couple had
adopted a six-year-old boy, Polo, but after he acquires
Ema’s taste for arson, physically scarring Ema’s sister,
the couple return him to the authorities. Ema regrets the
decision: despite Gastón’s opposition, she moves out
of their home and sets out to get Polo back. She finds

a job at his new school and begins sexual relationships
with his new parents, fireman Anibal and lawyer Raquel.
Helped by friends from the dance company, Ema
removes Polo from his school. She then announces a new
domestic arrangement to Anibal, Raquel and Gastón:
she is pregnant by Anibal and will provide a sibling
for Polo, thus entwining all their lives for the future.

Ema
Chile 2019
Director: Pablo Larraín
Certificate 15 107m 0s


Produced by
Juan De Dios Larraín
Screenplay
Guillermo Calderón
Pablo Larraín
Alejandro Moreno
Director of
Photography
Sergio Armstrong
Editor

Sebastián Sepúlveda
Art Director
Estefanía Larraín
Original Music
Nicolas Jaar
Sound Design
Roberto Espinoza
Costume Design
Muriel Parra
Felipe Criado

Choreographer
José Vidal
©Fabula
Production
Company
Fabula
Executive Producers
Rocío Jadue
Mariane Hartard

Cast
Mariana Di Girolamo
Ema
Gael García Bernal
Gastón
Santiago Cabrera
Aníbal
Paola Giannini
Raquel

Cristián Suárez
Polo
Giannina Fruttero
Sonia
Mariana Loyola
Sara
Eduardo Paxeco
Carlos
In Colour

[2.35:1]
Distributor
MUBI

Strictly come parenting: Mariana di Giroiamo, Gael García Bernal

Credits and Synopsis

Available
on VOD
platforms
in the UK
Free download pdf