09/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: Debuting director Tana Gilbert lets images – mobile-phone images, to be exact – speak for themselves

If there is one problem with Tana Gilbert’s Malqueridas [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tana Gilbert
film profile] – shown in Venice’s International Film Critics’ Week and already claiming its first awards, including the Grand Prize (see the news) – it’s that there have been quite a few films about incarcerated women recently, or even incarcerated mothers. Even at Venice, where Peter Kerekes’ 107 Mothers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Peter Kerekes
film profile] started its fruitful festival run.

What’s interesting, though, is that she sticks to blurry mobile-phone images and even blurrier recordings, made by the inmates themselves. No wonder “women serving prison sentences” are actually listed as the cinematographers here. There is nothing else, no “talking heads”, no outside view – just these snippets of their existence in various Chilean jails, captured in absolute secret. That she managed to edit it all into an understandable narrative, with the help of Javiera Velozo, is insane.

They are not doing it to call out injustice or to condemn anyone, although there are many who threaten them or simply view them as junkies, because “they all are”. Even the prison doctor. They are doing it because they are living their lives, or are trying to have fun sometimes, and that’s just part of it. Also, they probably don’t want to be forgotten. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as they say. That barely visible video, with terrible, terrible audio? It can actually go a long way, especially if your family is not that willing to visit.

Gilbert, making her feature debut, is focusing on the ordinary, on the search for connections, friends or “prison mothers”. They never talk to her directly, certainly not face to face, but she is listening carefully anyway. She listens when they open up about kids – they can stay with them until they are two years old – and she looks at them when they are doing their hair or furiously twerking. It’s a tender stare. It makes for an affecting, if hardly memorable, experience.

She doesn’t explain why these women were sentenced or go into too much detail as to what went down earlier. There is no judgement in this film, not even a little, and yet Gilbert’s take might be a tad too optimistic: it’s lovely to talk about female solidarity, especially under such harsh conditions, but Malqueridas feels a little too sweet at times. Then again, maybe that’s what life behind bars does to you. You either develop extremely thick skin, quickly, or you change. She can’t go too deep, not with this unreliable material, but she can help these women say: “We are here; we are waiting. And one day, if we are lucky, you will see our faces up close.”

Malqueridas was produced by Chile’s Errante and Germany’s Dirk Manthey Film. Its international sales are handled by Square Eyes.

Photogallery 07/09/2023: Venice 2023 - Malqueridas

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Tana Gilbert, Beatrice Fiorentino, Javiera Velozo, Carlo Sánchez, Karina Sánchez
© 2023 Isabeau de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it