Image: Melbourne Queer Film Festival
After a few minutes we already know that svelte young Noeli (Yanet Mojica) with her innocent face and her big earrings makes a living by befriending rich foreigners in an upscale Dominican beaches. In the first cuts we see her kissing an old, tanned Italian man who is saying goodbye, while Noeli sweetly asks for his gold-necklace as a gift; a gift that she sells after with the help of her boyfriend (Ricardo Ariel Toribio). The boyfriend seems to be in love with her but is also conflicted by his need for the money Noeli brings home.
Surprisingly, Noeli’s main client is female, Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), a solitary, ageing Frenchwoman who lives in a beautiful Caribbean paradise, socially separated from the undeniable poverty that populates the Dominican Republic. Anne seems to need the young girl as much for companionship as for sex, and has a plan to take her back to France with her. They do simple things together – swim, talk, walk on the beach, and lie with bodies entwined.
From a single phone call and the visit of an old American friend Tom, we learn that Anne has grandchildren and an estranged son back in Paris, but we never discover why they fell out. Anne seems to be a prisoner of this tropical limbo, in a place she loves but doesn’t belong to, with a girl she loves but who doesn’t quite belong to her.
Noeli’s young and smooth black skin visually contrasts with Anne’s wrinkles, which show the bravery of an actress as Geraldine Chaplin who is not afraid to display all the details of her age, wearing her own skin proudly, with no Hollywood tricks. There is no other actress who could have acted as Chaplin in this film. Sand Dollars sees her stepping over Hollywood machinery, as once did her father, Charlie Chaplin.
Beyond this relationship, there is the underlying theme of colonialism in the film, where ageing European visitors or residents allow themselves to return to the “new continent” in order to feel young again.
Sand Dollars is a film with beautiful images, a film about people in transit in which the question of whether to stay or whether to go, takes on a special, existential resonance.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sand Dollars
In Spanish/French with English Subtitles
2014
Director: Israel Cardenas and Laura Amelia Guzman
Cast: Geraldin Chaplin, Yanet Mujica and Ricardo Ariel Toribio
Producers: Pablo Cruz
Editor: Andrea Kleinman
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