Neruda

To tell his take on a poet persecuted and pursued by a repressive government, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín fills his film with light, even as it remains cloaked in shadow. You can’t have one without the other, the director known for The Club, No and other probing portraits of his nation posits. In the true tale at the heart of Neruda, freedom battles tyranny; in visuals that thrust the spirit of the feature’s story and subject onto the screen, the glow battles the gloom. 

Here, lamps flicker and spotlights shine down on pivotal figures — and, in the noir-leaning effort, the sunniness of both comes with murky, moody consequences for anything that falls beyond their luminous range. Working with his regular cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (Desde Alla), Larraín conveys a statement through radiance and its absence. Courtesy of Guillermo Calderón’s (Violeta Went to Heaven) resourceful script and its evocative dialogue, the film doesn’t make it difficult to grasp the notion that part of the beauty of author, politician, diplomat, communist and Nobel Prize-winner Pablo Neruda’s prose stems from its origins in opposition to oppression. By painting a picture through beams of brightness, however, it also ensures that that sometimes-stark, sometimes-softer contrast lingers in each image.

Set as the Cold War starts to cause a rumble, Neruda commences with a party that lays bare the feature’s many dichotomies, as the titular provocateur (Luis Gnecco, Much Ado About Nothing) entertains his pals just before government interest in his activities ramps up. Soon, alongside his well-to-do wife Mercedes (Delia del Carril, Argentinian TV’s Guapas), he’s in hiding and on the run from the authorities. And yet, Neruda remains resolutely determined to enjoy his new fugitive status and his resulting reputational boost, even leaving detective novels as clues for the eager police prefect, Óscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle), on his tail.

A creative cat-and-mouse chase ensues, and a creative cat-and-mouse chase film as well, made all the more so by the fact that Peluchonneau is a fictional invention that narrates the movie while stating his desire to be something more than a supporting character. Indeed, the imagined inspector’s dreams are realised as Neruda splices together actual biographical details with a compelling fantasy to become an engaging account of an existence turned into a legend. That the feature’s pleasures and resonance only increase as the real and the illusory intertwine — and as Larraín’s use of a jaunty score and obvious rear-projection calls attention to that fact — shouldn’t be surprising.

Of course, just as such an inspired approach to dissecting a real-life figure is gifted a perceptive, potent visual palette, it also demands shrewd performances to match. In fact, the movie’s stars shine as vibrantly as the gleam that enlivens each frame, with Gnecco and García Bernal displaying their versatile talents. In an ostensible two-hander, both prove enthusiastic when the moment calls for it, subtle in toying with each other and the film’s concept, and revealing in communicating a wealth of emotions. Accordingly, Neruda becomes the epitome not of embodying the truth of a narrative, but of expressing its essence; of knowing that a light burns in a dark scenario, and finding a way to make it flare up against and because of its dim surroundings.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Neruda
Director: Pablo Larraín
Chile | Spain | France | Argentina, 2016, 107 mins

Cine Latino Film Festival
www.cinelatinofilmfestival.com.au
Sydney: 9 – 24 August
Canberra: 10 – 21 August
Adelaide: 11 – 24 August
Brisbane: 12 – 24 August
Melbourne: 17 – 31 August