When I watch it: how is Julio Chávez’s debut as a director?

For his feature film directorial debut, Giulio Chavez he has chosen a story and a way of telling it that unites – does not mix, which would be another thing and one would speak of a mess – a theater and a documentary. There’s a lot of framing and reversing, it lets the characters do the talking, it doesn’t cut them or interrupt them. It does not indicate the position of the camera. Film, cut another scene.

Also, let’s see: Javier, who plays Chávez himself, is in all the scenes, and usually interviews his mother Elena (Marilu Marini) with a fixed camera, or by talking to his psychologist, his partner Darío or the owner of the gallery where he exhibits his works as a plastic artist.

It is in that game of gazes, dialogues, relationships with each other that we discover Javier’s intimacy, more than if he eats ice cream with his boyfriend or we hear him say he likes pizza.

But the trunk, the core of when I look at it It is the mother-child relationship. Javier says that, for him, his mother “is a mystery”. Maybe because of this, or maybe because Elena is already grown up and he doesn’t want to miss out on learning so many things about her – that he doesn’t know, or that her mother herself is about to forget – he makes her sit in front of him at home and records her.

There are several interviews in which Elena, more than Javier, will strip her thoughts and her past. But beware that Elena does not itch, she has no secrets and nothing is silent.

Just as he throws a “I lacked my mother’s affection”, he can state “Che fulero is silence” or directly -bah, it is assumed that after many years of silence- a “You never talked to me about women (assuming that Javier has been gay for a long time). What are you feeling? I can hardly digest … “

And in terms of revelations, did Javier’s father have sex with his grandmother?

They are two generations of adults, but different. And just like Elena says that “I masturbated as a girl and still do it”, Javier will be much more reserved.

Being close is very nice

It is clear that the son wants to get closer to his mother in this intimate film, without fanfare. Chávez shows that he cares more about what’s inside the frame than the frame itself, and in his first feature he counts more or less classically.

We will not discover now that both he and Marilú Marini are two great interpreters. The one most “interpreted” is Marini, and it is, as always, a spectacle to see her so relaxed and changing tonality in the same shot and scene.

At some point, one of them is honest and says to the other “I’m afraid of you”. Nothing good could come of a fear-based relationship, but Chávez, aside from the bewildering outcome of the unexpected and nothing else, moves firmly into his debut as a director.

“When I look at it”

Good

Dramatic comedy. Argentina, 2022. 80 ‘, SAM 13 R. Of: Giulio Chavez. With: Julio Chavez, Marilu Marini, Silvia Kutika. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Avellaneda, Showcase Belgrano and Quilmes.