It’s rare that I sit down to write about a film without any background information at all but Salvador is a recent film that has not been reviewed outside the Hispanic language press as far as I can see. I’m therefore reliant on Google Translate to make sense of Spanish and Latin American websites. Another shortish feature of under 90 minutes, Salvador tells a familiar tale of a middle-aged romance but situates it in a very dangerous time and place – the centre of Bogota in 1985 during action by the guerrilla forces of ‘M-19’, which included the occupation of the Ministry of Justice building in the city centre. A début feature by César Heredia Cruz, the film is inspired by the director’s own memories of his childhood and by the figure of his grandfather who was a tailor in the city. But it is a fiction, the director’s grandfather was not like the character in the film and did not react to events in the same way.
Salvador Velazquez (Héctor García) is a 46 year-old tailor. He is single and lives on his own except for his dog Laika. Each day he travels into the city centre and takes the lift up to the seventh-floor of a traditional office block and his workshop. It’s an unusual location for a tailor. He works on his own and his customers come to see him in his workshop. Salvador doesn’t have much of a social life but he visits his sister-in-law and his nephew, a university student, on most days. One day he finds there is a new lift operator in the office building, an attractive woman in her late thirties, Isabel (Fabiana Medina). Over the next few days/weeks, Salvador gradually gets to know something about Isabel, though he is slightly taken aback when she has her daughter, a school-child, with her in the lift one day. Gradually a romance develops, but at the same time, tension in the city mounts as M-19 become more of a threat. The local security forces are stopping people on the street to check ID cards and a curfew is brought in.
The romance narrative is structured as a slow but conventional courtship. Salvador is a quiet man but tall and not unattractive, especially when he smiles. Even so, he seems an unlikely partner for Isabel who is lively and adventurous. She attracts the attention of all the men in the office block. What does she want from Salvador? His name of course denotes ‘saviour’ and she is separated from her husband and worries about her daughter. But is Salvador the man for the job? Without wanting to spoil the plot development in any way I should perhaps state that though the pleasures of the romance are present in the film, the other element in the narrative remains important throughout. The film is about the real physical, and moral, difficulties of living in a city under threat of violent action by both guerrilla groups and government forces. Writer-director Cruz provides a kind of running commentary on the escalation of the conflict with snatches of news reports on the TV set in Salvador’s sister in law’s apartment, in the cafés and bars he visits and from the radio in his workshop. This is contrasted with the music that is associated with Isabel. Their early encounters include a discussion of her love for boleros. From his position high up in the city centre Salvador is also conscious of the helicopters above and the soldiers on the streets.
A tailor is an interesting character in this kind of atmosphere. Salvador has customers who might be associated with the military or the guerrillas. His is an intimate business. He deals with potentially dangerous men who he must measure accurately and fit their suits. He doesn’t usually make clothes for women, so Isabel’s entry into his workshop is provocative and creates genuine tension and excitement. Salvador is in some ways a surprising film and it marks a notable début. Colombia is a mid-range Latin-American film production centre with the potential to develop further and I enjoyed this opportunity to see a new release. Salvador plays again at HOME in Manchester on Sunday 15th August at 14.00
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