The Sleepwalkers is Paula Hernandez’s return to directing after a break and is a fairly typical tale of a family coming apart during a holiday weekend visit to their country house where widowed Gran is ruling the roost.
The focus on this film is on the relationship between Luisa (Erica Rivas) who is married to Emilio (Luis Ziembrowski), one of the sons and their daughter Ana, about 14 and played with slightly petulant innocence and confusion by Ornella d’Elia.
Other family members include Sergio and Ines, siblings of Emilio, and Sergio’s 3 boys which include Alejo (Rafael Federman), a somewhat precocious young adult who has been away for some time. Ines is also struggling as a new mother and there is Hilda, the family maid.
What I liked about the film was the mood Hernandez creates, the tension of hot summer days, the not-so-nice side of nature (prickly plants and biting bugs, humid heat, etc), the magnifying glass being placed on women in a world where men get away with things and women seem more servile and the acting of Rivas and d’Elia.
Pedro Onetto’s soundtrack is also underpinning without intruding.
What I found less convincing was the rather clichéd script. Yes, the lines are what people say but one expects a little more from an artist than the same old lines.
The handheld camera effect wears a little after a while. Mostly used to give us the sense of eavesdropping, of having just part of the whole reality, we do get the in your face emotional moments but by the end I wanted things to open out.
I also wondered if the ending invited us to review the film more than simply the tale of a family falling apart and more as the advice that eventually women need to get out of relationships where their choices are not respected.
It seems to be saying that duty leads us to stick with people and set-ups that do us no good. But is it so? I felt the film needed a coda in some sense as this family will never be the same.
Rivas does very well in the lead and Federman impresses as a rather creepy young man, too full of himself.
3 stars
passionfilm 