Contracorriente (Undertow 2009)

Its the story of Miguel, a fisherman who is married and about to have a child but hes also having an affair with Santiago, an artist and outsider. The story takes a turn for the fantastical when Santiago drowns and his spirit returns to ask Miguel to find his body and bury it according to village tradition in order for his soul to rest in peace. Miguel is now faced with a dilemma: does he admit that he was having an affair and essentially ruin his life in order to fulfil his lovers request or does he simply go on with his life and the constant knowledge that hes responsible for his lovers eternal unrest?

Its not quite clear if Santiago continues to haunt Miguel even after he makes the request but Id have to guess it would be difficult to live with the knowledge that you walked away from someone you loved simply to save face. Im a fan of these Latin American tales which so often come bundled with notions of the fantastic and deep rooted traditions and Fuentes-Leóns film certainly sounds the part (not to mention this trailer is very pretty).

Undertow
Likeable, small-scale metaphysical gay romance - think Truly Madly Deeply meets Brokeback Mountain with a touch of Claudia Llosa's Madeinusa - about the "forbidden" relationship between two straight-acting, thirtyish blokes in a small Colombian fishing village. Santiago (Manolo Cardona) is a well-travelled, quietly Bohemian artist/photographer who, while not exactly flaunting his sexuality, doesn't hide it under a bushel. His bisexual paramour Miguel (Cristian Mercado), conversely, maintains a conventional facade - to the extent that he marries and impregnates the unsuspecting Mariela (Tatiano Astengo). The plot pivots around a tragic, offscreen development which occurs, rather suddenly, around halfway - and which it wouldn't be fair to divulge here, as the narrative technique in feature-debutant writer-director Javier Fuentes-Leon's script relies heavily on the steady parcelling-out of information. Suffice it to say that what has been a straightforward depiction of social dynamics becomes something more fable-like and allegorical, stranger and richer. That much-abused term "magical realism," so routinely applied to any kind of weird-leaning Latin American literature and cinema, is as good a fit as any. undertow is persuasively acted by the appealing leads, with Astengo coping solidly with what is necessarily the trickiest role - shades of Anne Hathaway in Brokeback Mountain. It's shot by cinematographer Mauricio Vidal to evoke a strong, unobtrusive sense of place in this airy frontier between land and sea (it's never quite clear to what extent homosexuality remains taboo in this Catholic backwater). Pleasingly soapy in its storytelling convolutions - or rather telenovela-ish - undertow builds engrossingly and satisfyingly towards a climax... only to continue for nearly another half-hour, this overlength indicative of structural problems in the screenplay rather than with Roberto Benavides' editing. Overall, it's sufficiently unusual and adventurous to be worth a look, especially for programmers of gay-themed festivals, proving that Llosa's Madeinusa wasn't a blip in terms of raising the profile of cinema from this particular corner of South America.

A film by Javier Fuentes-León, 2009.

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Film & Animation

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[justsex21now]

Nice trailer ashintosan... ty for sharing

[Keith15B]

Do you know where I can find this film? It looks really interesting.