082 REVIEW
Directed by
PABLO LARRAÍN
Starring
MARIANA DI GIROLAMO
GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL
SANTIAGO CABRERA
Released
17 APRIL
ANTICIPATION.
From Jackie O to pyromaniac
reggaeton dancer Ema, Pablo
Larraín isn’t holding back.
ENJOYMENT.
A hypnotic and beautiful work
driven by a killer performance.
IN RETROSPECT.
You’ll remain under Ema’s spell
for a long time after the credits
have rolled.
he port city of Valparaíso, Chile, is said to
have been the home of the first volunteer
fire department in South America. And the
country still boasts an entire workforce of volunteer
firefighters. In his latest feature – the Valparaíso-set
Ema – Pablo Larraín rejects this local tradition, and
allows fire to burn across an otherwise uninterrupted
landscape.
Larraín’s voluntary firestarter here is the
eponymous Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo), a reggaeton
dancer married to longtime collaborator and
choreographer Gaston (Gael García Bernal), who is 12
years her senior. We are introduced to the couple as
their relationship reaches a peak of desperation and
virulence, shortly after their adopted son, Polo, has
been returned to social services following a violent
episode of pyromania that left Ema’s sister with severe
scars. “You taught him to set things on fire,” Gaston
tells Ema, and so begins this electric tale of seduction
and deceit, which is all mired in an inescapable sadness.
Ema is a woman in battle mode. She is as
determined to have Polo back as she is to divest herself
of the entrenched toxicity of her relationship with her
husband. All the while, she coils the threads of every
other relationship she has around her fingers, with
enchantress-like precision. She hurls insults at Gaston
and he whips them right back at her, each of them
taking turns at administering their own brand of casual
cruelty. She mocks his infertility and the failure of his
masculinity, while he recites on repeat Polo’s cries for
“mama Ema” as an indictment of her femininity. It’s
torturous to witness but Larraín expertly showcases
their intimate brutality and binds us to their story, onethat is painful and troubling, yet invigorated with the
colour, movement and light of their environment.
Mariana Di Girolamo is a blinding force throughout
the film, a walking, talking avatar for the flickering fire
she is so often drawn to. She is brash and destructive,
and suppresses a feral energy within her tough, skinny
frame. She prowls the streets in a permanent state
of self-defense, guarded by a slick, white crop of hair
and sparkling eyes. Much like in Larraín’s previous
film, Jackie, the title character here occupies the core
narrative space while a relentless world storms around
her. Ema pulls people in and pushes them away to the
beat of composer Nicolas Jaar’s brilliant electronic
score in a rapid orbital choreography of bodies and
feelings and power.
Where Ema thrives is in the thrall of her beloved
reggaeton, which Gaston detests, and one of the film’s
best sequences follows her and her girlfriends’ vibrant
and open-bodied routine through their hometown
as they reclaim space for their own expressions of
personality and sexuality. But it is also the helplessness
of Ema and Gaston as a couple that makes the narrative
so engaging and beautiful. The image of two lovers
folded into each other on their lost child’s race car bed
is strikingly composed like a piece of performance art.
How can Ema and Gaston ever seek forgiveness for
the unspeakable betrayal of a child? Who owes them
forgiveness? To whom do they owe an explanation?
Larraín offers few answers to these sprawling questions
of nature and nurture. Instead, the film plays out a
daring conclusion that doesn’t seek to resolve but
start over. The natural order of family life burns away
at Ema’s fingertips. CAITLIN QUINLANEma
T