Chilean cinema has certainly developed in recent years. This month a Chilean film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and here is a first-time writer-director Roberto Doveris creating an unusual coming-of-age story which succeeds on several levels. A weird and wonderful tale, Las Plantas combines genres and ideas that don’t always cohere, but the film is always watchable and it is innovative in interesting ways. I caught it on MUBI (on its last night of availability unfortunately).
The title refers to a comic book discovered by 17 year-old Flor in the garage of the apartment for which she is now responsible. The comic book appears to be Argentinean and offers an episode in a longer science fiction/fantasy/horror story which borrows from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and other familiar tales about plants that in the dead of night take over human bodies. Throughout the film there is a sense that the comic book and several other factors must be in some way metaphorical about the situation in which Flor finds herself. ‘Flor’ is short for Florencia, but ‘flor’ also refers to ‘flora’ or ‘flowers’.
Flor has more to cope with than most teenagers. Her brother Sebastian is in a persistent vegetative state and needs constant care in feeding and washing. Flor’s father is absent and her mother is also seriously ill in hospital. When Clara leaves (she may be Flor’s aunt?), Flor is in sole charge of the apartment and Sebastian. A creepy uncle appears and disappears one night. Money is in short supply and it appears that Flor has had to move schools. We don’t see her engaged in school work and she doesn’t seem to have a ‘best’ girlfriend. Instead she hangs out with two boys with whom she creates dances that might at some point be performed. The trio also engage in forays into internet chatrooms, looking for sexual encounters. Eventually it becomes clear that this fascination and anxiety about sex (and the comic book story) is what helps Flor get through the daily grind. In the final part of the narrative Flor’s sexual desire takes centre stage.
I can see from some of the online comments that the slow pace and the loose narrative has put off some viewers. It’s true that some characters appear without much explanation and that it is easy to get confused by characters who are similar in appearance and often photographed in shadow. On the other hand the whole film has a dreamlike quality and a ‘tidier’ narrative might lose some of the atmosphere or ‘tone’. The film stands or falls on the central performance of Violeta Castillo as Flor. This is her first listed feature and Castillo (who is Argentinian) has also provided some of the music in the film.
I’m a little surprised that the film hasn’t had wider distribution. I can see that the nudity (especially erect penises) might be a problem for censors but personally I’d be happy to see this film get a ’15’ certificate in the UK. It’s worth pointing out that the sequences depicting Flor’s developing sexuality are by no means sexist – nakedness is not ‘gendered’ here. It’s refreshing to see a narrative focusing on a young woman’s discovery of her own sexual desire and her own attempts to explore it.
Las Plantas won prizes in the ‘Generation 14+’ section of the Berlinale in 2016. Here’s the trailer from the festival:
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