Open Door by Iosi Havilio

Though he was at the Festival a few years ago, I came across Iosi Havilio's novel (translated into English in 2011), Open Door, which is such an excellent read.

The book is set in Argentina and gives us a glimpse into an unnamed narrator who returns home after a jaunt out in a northern village to visit a sick horse (she's a veterinary assistant), meets up with her girlfriend who suddenly disappears. The women are clearly having problems but when Aída goes into a shop in La Boca to buy cigarettes and never comes back out, a mystery of sorts opens up. In the short time after Aída goes into the shop, a person (maybe a man, maybe a woman) is on a bridge high above, surrounded by police and others trying to talk him or her down. A crowd gathers to watch and goad and click their tongues and when it seems that the person is, in fact, being talked down, suddenly the individual jumps and falls to a presumable death in the water. The central question is: was this Aída or not?

To call this book a thriller would be wildly misleading and, in fact, the best part of the book is the muted emotional response of the protagonist who goes on with life with almost no emotional reaction. She loses her job, and then without any explanation, returns to the village up north where she'd been visiting the sick horse the week before. There she falls in with an older man named Jaime and she becomes obsessed with a local teenaged girl who lives in the village.

It's such an austere story in many ways, mainly due to the lack of any kind of emotional response from the protagonist: she never reflects back on her life, her past, we know little to nothing about her childhood, her parents. All she does is push through life with no particular impulse driving her except sex (and even that is relatively infrequent). Occasionally, a phone call will come in from Buenos Aires, asking her to return to identify a body that's washed up but our heroine constantly ends up shaking her head. Where is Aída?

Sometimes a writer will come to the Festival and though I try to read as many Festival books as I can (I did read this 2-3 years ago), I will read it quickly without really revelling in it. Mainly that kind of reading is "trying to get a sense" of the book so that I know how to use the author. But it's in the months or years after the Festival that I will have time to read for the story, to revel in the language, to enjoy it.

Parabellum by Lukas Valenta Rinner

I love movies that raise more questions than they answer. If I walk out of a film with a satisfied, resolved sense that all is right with the world, then chances are, I will simply forget the movie unless there is something very special about it. But yesterday at MWFF, I saw the former kind of film: one that caused a whole host of questions. It was an Argentine/Uruguayan/Austrian film called Parabellum.

The film is odd. Very odd. It opens in Buenos Aires where an office worker at first seems to be going through his day but very soon it becomes clear that he's getting ready to move or leave. He gets rid of his cat, removes stuff from his office. There is no conversation about this. No voiceover. Just a man's actions that we are supposed to interpret. Cut to the woods and a kind of resort full of other people from the city: everyone is given a uniform and various options for courses: water survival, combat, guns and shooting, etc.

It turns out that the resort is a survival camp and all these city people are training for kind of impending doom or apocalypse. This sense of tension infects the movie, you're waiting for something to happen...meanwhile, rockets or missiles or maybe asteroids keep flying through the sky and exploding somewhere in the distance.

Gorgeous Argentine countryside is a main character

The aspect of this film which is hard to get your head around is the fact that there is very little dialogue: the characters are almost like robots, doing what they're told to do with no emotion whatsoever. There are no characters to hang your expectations onto.

But these facts really make you think about what it is to see a movie: how the emotional component of a film is really key to connecting with the audience. Emotion is almost the starting point of any film. But not here. No characters. No emotion. One almost asks oneself if this is even a film?! Of course, it is, but it's unlike any film I've ever seen.

As I walked out, I just kept asking myself: what just happened? What was that about? What did that all mean?!

Parabellum is the first feature film by Austrian director Lukas Valenta Rinner. Unfortunately, the film only plays once more Tuesday, September 1 at 11:30am...

I love film festivals! At work this week so limited time but I'm trying to squeeze in as many as I can.

Juan Campanella at Hay Festival

A few years back, Argentine director, Juan Campanella, won an Oscar for his Spanish-language film El secretro de sus ojos. The film is an interesting one: it's both a thriller and a story of history, that of the use and abuse of power before, during, and just after the Dirty War in Argentina. But it's most importantly a love story.

On stage yesterday, the director talked about this film and his career and what it meant for him to come back to Argentina (after directing some very popular TV shows in the USA like House and Law & Order), about how he managed to finance the film, about his earlier work, about film school in Argentina, about the film industry of Latin America and many other related topics.

The bit that had the entire 500+ member audience (in an amazing old colonial-era theatre, Teatro Adolfo Mejia) on the edge of their seats was his blow by blow analysis of a very famous shot from the film El secreto de sus ojos (written about here) that is over five minutes in a continuous panning shot that is quite remarkable in its conception and production. The director walked through each section of the shot, talking about the shooting, the mixing, the visual effects, the use of extras. Man, you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre, people were so riveted.

I love literary Festivals that don't stick only to "literature" and there are so many interesting conversations to

Teatro Adolfo Mejia de Cartagena

be had which only relate indirectly to literature. And I love this about our Montreal public: that they are willing to go with the flow often when we try our hand at non-literary themed events.

Stay tuned to 2014 to see a few events that aren't directly related to literature...

Though we're at the Hotel 10 again this year, I like the idea of branching out and using a neighborhood as our venue: Old Montreal, for example, or St-Henri. Seeing events in big theatres like I've been doing here has a totally different kind of energy to them. We like our model of presenting events now, but we're always thinking of ways to make it more interesting. Who knows what the future holds...

Alfonsina Storni

JOURNEY

Tonight I look at the moon
white and enormous.

It`s the same as last night
the same as tomorrow.

But it`s foreign, because never
was it so huge and so pale.

I tremble like
lights tremble on water.

I tremble like
tears tremble in my eyes.

I tremble like
the soul trembles in the body.

Oh the moon has opened
two silver lips

Oh how the moon has spoken to me
these three ancient words:

"Death, love, and myster..."
Oh my flesh is nearing its end.

Above the dead flesh
my soul becomes confused.

My soul - a nocturnal cat -
rises up over the moon.

It travels through the enormous sky
crouched low and sad.

It travels through the enormous sky
up over the white moon.

     --Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) Translated from the Spanish by Jim Normington