“Neither autobiographical nor therapeutic” is how Brazilian-Spanish director Sergio Oksman defined his lauded previous documentary On Football [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Sergio Oksman
fiche film] in an interview with us ten years ago (read it here), distancing himself from what he himself calls an “epidemic”: supposedly, the growing trend towards films with stories desperately focused on the traumas of their own auteurs, as if the screen were a skip in which to toss the residues of the soul. Following in the same vein is A Scary Movie, which has opened the most daring section of the 73rd San Sebastián Film Festival, Zabaltegi-Tabakalera; although it once again involves Oksman’s own father, pre-teen son and the helmer himself, the topics it broaches are universal, extending beyond the precise details of the everyday and personal. For that reason, it could be argued that Oksman, while simultaneously employing cinema as a therapeutic self-help tool, uses his own life as material that feeds into and complements the ideas of cinema, without imposing it as the epicentre of the storyline.

His reluctance to force his own persona and point of view upon the audience is also reflected in the movie’s running time: over its modest 72 minutes, and thanks to its concise and dynamic structure, the documentary manages to subtly but eloquently map out the existential anxieties of a middle-aged man in his roles as a son and father. These are anxieties that a wide array of audience members will identify with – they are not overloaded with unnecessary details, but are rather rewarded for their attention with a magnificently formed film, where the ephemeral and the eternal come together in an exquisite combination.

In the derelict Terminus hotel in Lisbon, the camera follows a father and son, who gain access to the building thanks to a friend of theirs and spend a few days there over the summer – according to the dad, this will be the last summer of the boy’s childhood, as he needs to make progress with his father’s native language, Portuguese. Empty hallways, scant furniture, swings creaking in the playground and a single, locked room, number 103, which they must not enter. The explicit reference to The Shining by Stanley Kubrick leads us to expect a thriller, but will the danger and dread really spring from where we expect them to just because of this filmic citation?

In a subtle but comprehensive way, the disjointed narrative, which jumps between past and present, introduces fragments of memory and personal reflections: on the director’s parents, who emigrated to Europe, and their return to Brazil; the father’s abandonment of the family; and the decades-long rupture in their relationship. Is this pattern of abandonment passed down in the genes from one generation to the next? This is a topic previously addressed in On Football, but here, especially after the passing of Oksman’s father – who appears in excerpts filmed for a work they were not able to complete before his death – our attention is focused on the relationship with the son, who’s on the cusp of adulthood. However, the father’s concerns do not really upset this boy, who’s not even scared of the horror films from the previous generation. His life experience, of which he has more in front of him than behind him, has imbued him with courage, and even though he opens the forbidden door, he will not find anything alarming behind it.

Thus, A Scary Movie is a slick portrait of the open life cycle, as seen through the eyes of the middle-aged generation, weighed down by the burdens of the past and responsibility for the future; Oksman pulls this off thanks to some poetic camerawork and editing, unfurling layers of observation, contemplation, and perceptions of life and its constant uncertainties.

A Scary Movie was produced by Dok Films (Spain) in co-production with Ferdydurke (Spain) and Terratreme Filmes (Portugal). Patra Spanou is in charge of its international sales.