Cannes 2023: Légua
cannes 23It’s clear from the outset and throughout that one major theme of Joao Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis's feature Légua is that it is what is not spoken aloud that speaks the loudest volumes. Feelings of sexual and societal, as well as cultural, oppression take firm hold of a feature that no doubt gets its point across but undeniably stretches thematic resources for its almost two-hour running time.
Due to the stoic nature of the beast and lack thereof of on-the-nose expositional emotional dialogue, much of the feature contends with character stoicism that slowly but surely builds up the image that Légua intends. It takes a significant time to lead up to the character and story arc it wants to showcase and even then might even outstay its welcome as assured as it is throughout. Daughters and mothers, daughter and mother figures and the like discuss places in the world in which they belong. A longing for more yet the mourning nature of responsibility and inevitability beckons and ultimately sinks its teeth too far deep to be anything than a moral wound.
Légua is, no doubt, poetic and poignant in its showcasing of circumstances, with its surface level of projection in elderly statesmen and women doing what they do without any other thought process aside from what needs to be done, the generation behind losing sexual gratification and freedom with the inevitability of fire of age burning behind them, with the next generation fuelled with innocence and self-importance and a layer of naive ignorance slowly deteriorating in the ether. These sentiments are filled in Légua behind that very nature of stoicism and shot in a manner of depressing and elongated voyeurism with often utilised capturing said moments is a long take of a cemented camera watching characters slowly inevitably drown in that very nature.
It’s a shame and perhaps not necessarily a criticism but before long this atmospheric notion of drowning while alive and in the vein of how it shot becomes slightly excruciating to watch develop. Not in any way to suggest how it is crafted showcases poor workmanship but by the very nature of the beast, it offers so little engagement that by the first and at a push second or third time of this technique being utilised it feels restrictive and therefore further along unresponsive with the viewer. Nevertheless, with how good lead actress Carla Maciel is with the content and context of the picture overall, Légua undoubtedly captures the viewers' interest. But alas, for almost two hours, it ironically is like the context of the feature itself peaks and prolongs the inevitable.
