THE VANISHED ELEPHANT: Javier Fuentes-León's art film about love and identity arrives

It's being marketed as some kind of "thriller," with mentions of movies on the order of Tell No One and The Secret in Their Eyes tossed in for good measure. Comparisons, as they say, are odious, and so far as the new Spanish-language film from Peru/Columbia/ Spain, THE VANISHED ELEPHANT, is concerned, these do the movie little justice and, in fact, just might sink it once this comparative word-of-mouth gets out. Tell No One was a hugely intricate and fast-moving thriller, and one of, if not the most-successful-at-the-boxoffice foreign language film of its decade. More slow-moving, The Secret in Their Eyes, was also a kind of mystery thriller that built to a whopping and surprising conclusion (in addition to walking away with Best Foreign Language Film that year).

As written and directed by Javier Fuentes-León (shown at left, who gave us the bisexual drama about death and the closet, Undertow, some years back), The Vanished Elephant comes much closer to a genuine "art" film -- a kind of puzzle about the artistic process, identity, love and narcissism -- which poses as a mystery only in the sense that all of our identities are, finally, mysterious. This is also quite a beautiful film to view, one of the most visually compelling I have seen in the past year or so. I believe Señor Fuentes-León means this visual beauty to be part of the puzzle, as well as the film's fun. It is, in both cases.

We come back again and again to visuals that remind us of former visuals and/or begin to fill in certain blanks -- sometimes literally, at other times symbolically. As our hero, a cop-turned-mystery-writer, Edo (a commanding, encompassing performance by Salvador del Solar, above) tries to unravel the disappearance of his girlfriend (played by Vanessa Saba, below), some years previous, he comes up against quite an arsenal of oddities.

Chief among these is a man who appears to be impersonating the leading character, Rafael Pineda (Lucho Cáceres, below, right), in the series of popular mystery novels that Edo writes. There is also a District attorney set on proving that Edo was the person responsible for his girlfriend's disappearance, a photographer who has organized a new exhibit around Edo's famous novels, and other possible red herrings.

The "elephant" of the title is found in a museum painting that doubles as a rock sculpture relic somewhat destroyed during a famous earthquake that took a huge death toll just at the time of that Edo's girlfriend went missing.

Deaths begin to pile up, and yet the movie never seems to become any kind of realistic mystery. Instead the clues lead back and back again to our Edo, and Señor del Solar's quiet charisma and persuasive acting keeps us both on point and on hold as the mystery continues to be revealed.

As is sometimes the case, it's the journey rather than the destination that makes The Vanished Elephant as intriguing as it is. When we reach the finale, it is probably del Solar's handsome, troubled face that counts for most, making this movie about identity and losing oneself in grief and fantasy so unusually compelling -- even, finally, quite moving and sad.

From Oscilloscope Laboratories and running 109 minutes, The Vanished Elephant opens here in South Florida this Friday, March 4, at the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables and the Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood. To see further playdates, cities and theaters, click here then scroll down.

Peruvian brothers Daniel & Diego Vega's glowing OCTUBRE gets a theatrical release

Effecting a major change in an on-screen character -- the deep and lasting kind that resists easy melodrama -- is no simple task. That's probably why, of all the things we moviegoers expect and receive, this is one of those with which we're least often gifted. So all hail a pair of filmmakers from Peru, brothers who, until now, had but a single short film to their credit: Daniel Vega Vidal and Diego Vega Vidal. Their collaborative effort titled OCTUBRE offers up this change in the form of its leading character, a money lender named Clemente who is so uptight and self-shielded from feeling that, rather than having any positive identity of his own, he is known by all as "the pawnbroker's son."

Thanks to brothers Daniel (at left) and Diego (below, right) the strange, circumscribed world of this man is opened up to us, as, only minutes into the movie, Clemente -- whom you might call a less-evil loan shark -- receives an unexpected gift that sets his life slowly but obstinately onto a different course. He resists the change mightily, and indeed it comes so grudgingly and haltingly that uninterested viewers might even miss it.

But it's there all the same, and -- via everything from performances to set design, camera-work, dialog and all the rest that goes into good filmmaking -- we perceive it slowly taking shape. And when, by the movie's end, we understand what has happened, our response is not the teary-eyed, feel-good stuff that most movie provide. No, the brothers end rather in the middle of things so that we're taken a bit aback. Only upon reflection do we realize what we've seen and experienced.

Now, I like a good cry as much as the next moviegoer, but I must say that I'm even more impressed with what the Vega bros have done. They capture us with stillness and vision, with quiet symbo-lism that won't shout. Instead -- like the piece of large counterfeit currency our "hero" has received and keeps trying to pass off to the next sucker -- it takes on meaning and weight in utterly believable fashion.

The brothers have assembled a crack cast to deliver their little tale, and each performer shines. In the lead role of Clemente, Bruno Odar (above) lets a gruff exterior mask, certainly no heart of gold, but the soul of a man who has grown up by keeping himself away from kindness and feeling. His change is so incremental and unfelt by him that he and we realize it at approximately the same time.

The agents of his change are several. One, quite small, one will be obvious within the films' first few minutes. Two others in particular stand out: Sofia, who becomes a kind of caretaker of Clemente's life (played by the very interesting actress Gabriela Velásquez, above) and Don Fico (Carlos Gassols, below) an old man who has his own problems but who connects with Clemente is ways both known and not-so.

The brothers' cinematographer Fergan Chávez-Ferrer does a yeoman job of shooting beautiful yet simple interiors, cropped subtly and interestingly, and the lighting is rich and lovely with browns and yellows, warm and uninviting at the same time, as seems appropriate for Clemente. Character is shown through performance but also via the set. Note below the chair on which the money-lender sits and the lower stool for his clients. Clemente is not a large man, but there will be no mistaking who is in charge.

The film takes place during Peru's religious spring celebration. (October? Remember: We're in the Southern Hemisphere.) Even so there seems as much paganism as Christianity going on. You'll note, with some surprise and wonder, the "spell" the caretaker hopes to put on her employer, and the particular mode with which she goes about preparing it. Yikes -- tasty! Does this work? Maybe. But then everything that everyone does seem finally, quietly to work. Just as does this remarkable little movie.

Octubre, another fine title from the newly revived New Yorker Films (who last year gave us My Dog Tulip), opens this Friday, May 6, in New York at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema -- followed by a welcome national release.