19/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Lola Arias’s prison musical amplifies the voices of a remarkable pleiad of characters with a non-professional cast reconstructing their days of incarceration

Argentinian director Lola Arias returns to the Berlinale Forum with her sophomore effort, Reas [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lola Arias
film profile], a feisty documentary-narrative film-musical hybrid with women and trans ex-inmates re-enacting their incarceration.

Meet Yoseli (Yoseli Arias), Nacho (Ignacio Amador Rodriguez), Estefi (Estefy Harcastle), Noe (Noelia LaDiosa), Paulita (Paulita Asturayme) and Carla (Carla Canteros). They remember their prison past and their dreams for a better future through moving and singing. These dreams might seem ordinary for “normal” people but are daring metaphors for what constitutes freedom for them.

Another musical? Why not? It’s not a relic any more. The musical is undergoing an active revitalisation both in Hollywood and in Europe. Elvis, Wonka, Annette [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and West Side Story are just some recent international hits. Meanwhile, this year in Europe, we can expect Jacques Audiard’s musical thriller Emilia Perez and Stéphane Ly-Cuong’s In the Nguyen Kitchen.

This resurgence is fuelled by a renewed appreciation for the potential of playfulness and experimentation that the musical encourages. Arias uses it as a healing tool. By reconstructing memory and letting the heroines do the talking, the film pushes the boundaries of contemporary musical and takes it away from kitsch territory to a more therapeutic and introspective one. However, a moderated form of kitsch is still present, yet it borders on a political and social meditation on crime, amends, body and community.

Once a prison – now their stage. The jail setting is an integral part of the film. As it wasn’t possible to film in Ezeiza prison, the ex-detainees of Ezeiza re-replay their past behind bars in the abandoned Caseros prison. In the late 1970s, under the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, it was a jail for political prisoners and a frequent target for human rights groups that were whistleblowing about Caseros’s inhumane living conditions. The facility’s notoriety and eerie poetic visuality add symbolic layers, inviting reflections on the treatment and systemic oppression of “inconvenient” people.

The moments when they burst out in song reveal the key stories of heartbreak, getting caught or getting married. Even the head count becomes a musical piece. With upbeat, Latino rhythms, they sing about the controlling dynamics between them and the guards, thus creating a wonderful musical sequence that evokes the cynicism of this domineering practice. The film doesn’t shy away from some MTV-era clichés either.

The eclectic choreography feels natural, allowing the heroines to move and express themselves freely. Take the scene where Noe, a trans woman formerly a victim of forced prostitution, gives a voguing class to her fellow inmates. Noe's vibrant character is indeed the film’s beating, comedic heart.

Except for a brawl between Carla and Noe that escalates into a dance-off, there's never any violence or backstabbing among the gang. Reas is not interested in pitting them against each other, instead choosing to be a film about solidarity in captivity. Nevertheless, the music-less scene with the guards beating Nacho up brings us right back to the prison realism.

Although the attention is devoted relatively equally to each member of the ensemble cast, Yoseli and Nacho stand out as protagonists. The trans man Nacho, the prison’s rock-band leader, brings an edginess and a rock’n’roll aspect. But there’s more to it than meets the eye: Nacho’s persona oozes an intimate tragedy paired with great ambitions.

Yoseli's arrival and departure lay out the film’s framework, as she is the viewer’s insider behind bars. As the soap opera-loving Yoseli never loses her tenderness or uncorrupted hopefulness, her journey shows that maturing in captivity doesn’t necessarily imply an emotional withdrawal.

Arias’s respect for her cast materialises through her humble directing. By simply letting them shine, Reas carefully avoids the tiniest hints of stigmatisation of these otherwise marginalised characters. There’s no search for sensation, no premeditated ambitions of wokeness. Just real people having a bit of fun and perhaps, just perhaps, getting some closure.

Reas is a co-production between Argentina’s Gema Films, Germany’s Sutor Kolonko and Switzerland’s Mira Film. The world sales are handled by France’s Luxbox.