Sad, funny, bizarre and off-kilter: Jiménez, Scherson and Zambra's take on FAMILY LIFE

Directed by Cristián Jiménez and Alicia Scherson (Ms Scherson is pictured below) and written by Alejandro Zambra, the new Chilean movie, FAMILY LIFE, proves equal parts oddball and fascinating. Never boring for an instant, often provocative and by its finale, leaving you (along with at least one of its characters) in a state of desolation, the movie offers up a highly unusual main character who is utterly irresponsible and sociopathic. And yet the movie itself is surprisingly light and airy, seeming to bubble along on the strength of its odd plot, the genuineness of its characters (all of whom are bizarrely believable), and the relatively strong writing and direction.

The script, from Señor Zambra, is full of sharp dialog that moves the plot along nicely while opening up the subjects -- responsibility, relationships, and that "family life" of the title -- that are of such interest to the filmmakers. Ms Scherson, a few years back, gave us another interesting "family" film, Il futuro, and she's back at it again with this new one -- which on one level is much more mainstream and yet also quietly refuses to pigeon-hole itself too easily. Señor Jiménez is responsible for the also oddball Chilean/Argentine film Bonsai (based on a novel by Zambra), and the resulting collaboration between these three artists turns out to be a productive one indeed.

The plot, on one level, could hardly be simpler: A family -- mom, pop and young daughter (above) -- must suddenly leave Chile for France for a few months, and when a caretaker for their apartment falls through, dad asks a rather distant relative, Martin, to live there and look after the place. The family barely knows this guy but they are willing to give him a chance.

What happens when the family departs and Martin moves in is quite, quite interesting -- utterly expected yet often not so, full of oddity that works because it is based on character rather than contrivance and exposes itself slowly and strangely. The actor who plays the lead -- Jorge Becker -- is just about perfectly cast. He's kind of cute but nothing spectacular, sports a nice full-frontal package, and is able to simultaneously express, while keeping a good part of this hidden, the bizarre personality -- full of fear, anger, hope and general unease -- of someone who has never properly grown up and yet inhabits the body of a man.

Martin cannot accept responsibility, and when a relationship blooms between him and a local young woman, he must resort to huge pretense to carry it off. How all this occurs, along with what results from it, is alternately amusing and disturbing because the object of Martin's affection (Gabriela Arancibia, above, in a lovely, intelligent, guileless performance) proves such a genuine and loving partner.

The movie refuses to allow us to take it too seriously -- we're not talking tragedy here -- and yet it works very well. We root for both leading characters, hoping against hope that Martin can somehow "come around." Sorry, this is nothing like your typical rom-com. The characterizations, however, are strong enough to surmount all else. You may not like what you are left with as Family Life closes, but you will certainly not be able to discount it out of hand.

From Monument Releasing and Cinema Tropical and running just 80 minutes, Family Life opens this Friday, June 9, for a one-week run in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with openings in San Diego at the Digital Gym on Friday, June 23; at the Tower Theater here in Miami on Friday July 21; and at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco on Friday, July 28, followed by other U.S. cities. The film will be available on TVOD come August 1, and via Amazon Prime on September 1. So, really, you've no excuse to miss this one! 

IL FUTURO: a Roberto Bolaño work comes to the screen, adapted by Alicia Scherson

From the few short stories TrustMovies has read by the late Chilean prize-winning author Roberto Bolaño, it's clear that the guy had an interest in and appreciation of movies, so I do wonder what he would make of IL FUTURO, the new film that Alicia Scherson has adapted and directed from Bolaño's 2002 Una Novelita Lumpen? Though I have not read that "little novel," from what I have read of Bolaño, it seems to me that Ms Scherson has captured in her own visual style some of the author's mixture of the real and the surreal, along with the accompaniment of odd feelings that occur as you are reading the work of this strange and rather wonderful writer.

What happens in the film is perfectly believable, in its odd way, yet you feel that you have also entered some kind of dream state. How Scherson (shown at right) does this visually has a lot to do with her cinematography (the cinematographer is the gifted Ricardo DeAngelis, who began his career shooting the extraordinary Man Facing Southeast!). Here the planes that we see, which ought to be giving dimension and depth, are somehow flattened into a single, dimensionless level. Though distance is lost, the flat perspective gives off a wondrous sense of the otherworldly, while remaining "real."

This visual sense fits nicely into the story of a South American brother (Luigi Ciardo, above, left) and sister (Manuela Martelli, above, right) of high-school age (she older than he) who are suddenly orphaned while in Spain and must stick together and somehow make their life in this new country. A tale like this could go in so many directions, but Bolaño/Scherson turn it into something quite real on one level but into the fantastic on another.

The girl must work to bring in enough extra income to take care of them. The boy begins cutting school and hanging out at a nearby gym, from which he brings home a couple of "friends" (Alessandro Giallocosta, above, left, and Nicolas Vaporidis, above, right.) These are unsavory types, all right, yet both seem a little different from the usual aging delinquents. But then, so are sis and bro.

There's a odd/kindly social worker, too, who is helping, more or less, the kids to keep on track. Into the mix comes a old actor and muscle man, now blind but still wealthy (Rutger Hauer, in one of the best roles he's had in a long while), whom sis is ordered to "befriend" and then find the "safe" in his apartment. Nothing goes quite according to plan, and all is seen through that continuing surreal gaze.

Mixing thriller tropes with film noir, love stories, children in jeopardy and the just-slightly-fantastic, Scherson juggles her balls deftly. How you react to this will depend somewhat, I think, on your acceptance of art movies -- films in which content and style are quite different from what you would get via something mainstream. You'll have to be willing to allow your sense of reality to expand a bit, as you question and wonder and surmise.

Yes, this is an "art film." But why not? Bolaño was an artist, and so, it seems, is Ms Scherson. Il Futuro, which of course means The Future (but we don't want to mix this one up with Miranda July's recent movie), a Chile/Italy/Germany/Spain co-production, distributed by Strand Releasing and running 94 minutes, opens this Friday, September 6, in New York City, exclusively at the IFC Center and will eventually open in the Los Angeles area on November 1 at Laemmle's Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.