IFFR 2020 - Ar condicionado (Air Conditioner)
IFFRCapturing the psychology and sociology of a particular society and compressing them down to a feature-length film with a plot, characters and music is no easy task. A balance between the communication of its ideas and narration of its plot and characters is what makes a film effective in its internal and external impact upon the viewer.
Losing balance means losing the audience. This is a gruelling reality that every social drama film faces at one point or another and, in theoretical ideas, these two elements seem complementary to each other. After all, every societal problem carries its own narrations and emotions to it. However, the discussion here is of compressing these situations into a shorter format where one element might overpower the other. Heavy messaging can often destroy its own catalytic narration and sometimes, in the chase of achieving complete artistry, filmmakers forget their central motif to ship a product that is all style but no substance. Then there comes the third category of failure, which stems from the lack or excess of every motif and narrative technique that leads to a product feeling aimless in its focus. This produces an experience that feels hollow, sleep-inducing and forgetful way before it even ends. This experience is the unfortunate reality of director, Fradique's Air Conditioner.
Firstly, the correlation between the film and its failures is not to be taken as an allusion to the filmmakers lacking "heart". If anything, Air Conditioner has a lot of heart and determination behind it that is visible from the onset of its production. The feature strives to showcase the repetitive chores of a regular low-paid worker. His hopes and dreams are contrasting to that of his reality, and every narrative element and technical decision showcases the care that it has towards its subject. However, the intensity of this care is what leads to its failure.
Fradique's insistence on transporting the audience to a genuine part of the world, showcasing real problems, is what leads to its aimlessness in the first place. The filmmaker's obsession with long shots leads to nothing but annoyance. Sure, there is a strive for authenticity behind the decisions of these long shots, but after a while, their inserts into the film feels nothing but gimmicky. For instance, there is one long shot of a man walking through a corridor, followed by a short cut of him exiting a door. There is then a still frame of him talking to two people and then returning back to the same corridor. The same long shot utilised before would have sufficiently communicated the mundane nature of the character's life. However, the scenario is presented as such: the long shot follows the character and then, as soon as he exits the door, he is left behind. A sharp and uncut 180-degree turn is then taken as if the cameraman is driving a mini car. Characters who do not even open their mouth then give a verbal account of the scenario before the character is followed back through the same long corridor. Filming in this way means the audience loses all connection to the scene because they have drifted off to sleep way before the character has even re-entered the corridor.
On its creative side, the story and dialogue attempts to be environmental in nature and in its pursuit of viewing transportation. However, sometimes these aspects would indulge too much into their environment that they would forget to provide a medium through which the audience could connect to the situations, even if they were never in them.
These decisions regarding the narrative and dialogue confuse the actors who, in a lack of compelling medium for the environment, could have acted as the mediums themselves. When every other dialogue and expression feels prepared and unnatural, the audience is only provided with a point of unintended laughter and not a genuine emotional connection.
It is with decisions like these where the filmmakers fail at their communication and, in effect, destroy the impact of their product. It is not a case of "all style, no substance" or "all substance, no style", it is the extremity of both the styles and substances which makes the feature feels crowded in creative efforts, leaving the film speaking everything and the audience feeling nothing.