A spiral of contained emotions
Alberto Rodriguez brings his last work AFTER to the Guadalajara Film Festival
Director Alberto Rodriguez
AFTER (Spain) is the new film that Sevillian director Alberto Rodriguez has presented in competition in the Ibero-American Fiction Feature Films category at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. The director himself admitted that the film was born amidst complicated circumstances, following SEVEN VIRGENES's success at the Spanish box office and the international recognition that came with it: "after four troubled years, - he says - the hope for new projects started fading away; then we began working on AFTER with these negative feelings and finished with an even worse state of mind. It was more demolishing than what we initially intended."
Rodriguez adopts here a three-part structure, following the events of a single evening in which three old friends get together after a long time. AFTER therefore is made up of three subjective points of view, and the truth escapes the eye. The focus is instead on raw emotions, which make Rodriguez's fifth effort a rather obscure one.
The stories of Manuel (Tristán Ulloa, LUCIA Y EL SEXO), Julio (Guillermo Toledo, EL CRIMEN PERFECTO) and Ana (Blanca Romero) all carry masked emotions, further disrupted by a spiral of fear and drugs. The outcome is cleary imaginable by the viewer, but this tortuous path of drama, confusion and dependency doesn't lack a tragic grip on the viewer, tackling contemporary concerns as our relationship with our public persona, our love scars and the tendency to fight pain through alcohol and drugs. One evening can be enough to make you seek excess as an escape valve.
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