GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 - The Sleepwalkers ( Los sonámbulos)
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020According to the clinical definition of sleepwalking; it is a condition where someone walks and performs tasks, some rather complex, without being aware of what they are doing. It often occurs during the phase of deep sleep and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it is a rather common behavioural disorder. Interestingly, it is also a perfect metaphor to illustrate the themes Argentine writer/director Paula Hernández tackles in her newest piece.
In fact, the title of this film, The Sleepwalkers, carries a perfectly valid literal connotation to the narrative as well, because one of the characters, Ana (Ornella D’Elia), suffers from this condition. This is how she’s introduced – she is found by her mother Luisa (Erica Rivas, known to festival audiences from Wild Tales) standing completely naked in a hallway waiting for the lift to arrive. It is later revealed that her condition is hereditary, carried over from her father’s side of the family. It is also a bit of a red herring because what promises to be a Chekhov’s gun in this narrative is rather a point of the metaphorical symmetry instead, or an analytical crutch needed to understand what this film is about.
In the simplest terms, The Sleepwalkers applies this phenomenon of performing tasks in a state of deep sleep to the characters’ entire existence. Both Luisa and Ana live their lives in a state of persistent slumber and Hernández uses their predicament as an avatar for a more generally-understood societal problem of imperative cultural significance – the imbalance of power between men and women. This entire movie is a metaphorical dissection of an oppressively asymmetrical gender dynamic too many women define as a grim reality of their relationships. Luisa, an interpreter who hid her dreams in her back pocket while working for a publishing company owned by her husband’s family, is essentially trapped in a claustrophobic world built by men. She has very little say over anything concerning her own life, or the life of her daughter; those decisions are made by other people and she just bears it. She keeps her mouth shut and her head down because it’s just easier to go along than to have to claw and fight over every inch of independence.
Paula Hernández illustrates Luisa and Ana’s grave situation using both the narrative and the claustrophobic perspective achieved by filming much of the scenes in extreme close-ups as indispensable tools. She builds a thick atmosphere of hopelessness and impending catastrophe during a handful of key scenes, like a dinner conversation where Luisa’s maternal authority is constantly undermined by everyone at the table, or when she has to politely turn down her husband’s inopportune romantic advances. Ana’s predicament is no different; she is casually patronized and teased throughout the film, though most of those narrative wrinkles tend to fly under the radar and only fall into place once the wheels come off in the final act. Once events boil over and the narrative reaches its horrifying crescendo, the viewer is confronted with a realization that Luisa’s own somnambulist tendencies (allowing to have the reins of her life to be taken away from her) have precipitated an irreversible disaster.
Once all the cards are laid out on the table, The Sleepwalkers reveals its true colours. It is not a polite relationship drama about male oppression, but rather a slow-burning intellectual horror film drawing heavily from Thomas Vinterberg’s Celebration, Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours, as well as the works of Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke and Ruben Ostlund. It is a potent roar, a metaphorical wake-up call for all women trapped in toxic relationships to act, speak up and regain control over their lives. Because nobody else but them – as the filmmaker poignantly suggests in the closing shots of the movie – will ever do it for them. Freedom and independence are never gifted but fought for and won with blood, sweat and tears. Paula Hernández drives this point home with immeasurable conviction thanks to her assured directorial command and stylistic subtlety woven around a thought-provoking and immensely relevant subject matter.
