Program Notes
FAMILIA RODANTE (ROLLING FAMILY)
Chale Nafus
Director of Programming, Austin Film Society
We’re going straight to Hell.- Emilia, matriarch
Are
families inherently tragic or comic? The easy answer is that most
families are both tragic and comic, but at different times. What is
tragic or disturbing for a family this year may be looked back upon as
at least humorous or even absurdly funny the following year. But when
one is in the midst of family tensions and dramas, it’s usually
difficult to find the humor. As an audience watching FAMILIA RODANTE
(ROLLING FAMILY), we can probably find a lot more comic elements than
the family members themselves would appreciate.
84-year-old
Emilia is the matriarch of this extended family on the road. Asked by
relatives in her distant hometown to serve as a madrina (matron of
honor) at a wedding, Emilia tells her family they will all go to
Misiones for the wedding. Her decision is evidently to be obeyed, no
questions allowed. This is a good excuse for Emilia to revisit her
birthplace one last time before an inevitable death. Even though she
doesn’t say so, her daughters intuitively know what this trip means to
their mother.
These two daughters, Marta and Claudia, are
married and have children. Always distraught, Marta, with somewhat long
hair usually pulled back, is married to the overweight Oscar, and their
three children are Gustavo (a teenage boy just discovering the joys and
pains of his adolescent urges), Matias (a sweet younger boy who loves
stray animals), and blonde dread-locked Paola, who has an infant child
from her scruffy boyfriend Claudio. Quiet Claudia, who has rather short
hair, is married to Ernesto, bespectacled and always complaining
without doing anything to help. Their only child is Yanina, who invites
her best friend Nadia along for the ride.
These eleven (and
then twelve, when Claudio unhappily climbs aboard) people will jam
themselves into a 1958 Chevrolet Viking truck with attached camper and
go on a 1200 kilometer (745 miles) journey from the metropolitan area
of Buenos Aires northward to Misiones on the border with Brazil. During
the course of the trip, which takes several days, old desires resurface
and new ones appear, creating tensions (both comic and dramatic) inside
the camper. Just as in PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES, several parallel
stories begin unfolding and commenting on one another, often
unknowingly but generally within the environs of the camper and truck.
To
me, the funniest aspect of the film is that the adults never realize
that a full-blown emotional/sexual affair is taking place among the
three adolescents. The adults are so focused on their own psycho-sexual
tensions that they are unaware of much else. Ernesto’s middle-age
crisis of affection and desire is the stuff of absurdist humor (when
it’s happening to someone else, just as all humor is funnier when
someone else is the butt of the joke or ridiculous situation). There is
simply not enough space for dangerous liaisons, as Ernesto will
discover. Even Oscar’s hatred of his daughter’s babydaddy has some
complex sexual overtones – jealous father disapproving of the man who
gets his daughter pregnant and but doesn’t act appropriately. Once
Claudio is added to the ménage in the camper, the tensions are even
more complex. The irony is that these people are all rushing off into
the countryside to attend a wedding, which will united two more
souls/minds/bodies, who might end up being just as miserable as these
city couples.
Throughout the course of this long trip in a
nearly 50-year-old vehicle, the inevitable car trouble happens. Since
director Trapero grew up in a family in which his father had a car
parts business, there is a nice bit of humor in Oscar’s attempt to find
a spare part for an old Chevy in a remote area. Ironically, Oscar owns
an auto parts store in Buenos Aires, but he didn’t bring any spare
parts on this trip. Heat, humidity, mosquitoes, cranky nerves,
children, an infant, cramped space, and arguments all make for
uncomfortable moments which can be funny or dramatic, depending on our
point of view. Toll road fares and unexpected “road control
checkpoints” all make Oscar’s blood boil, especially since some of his
car documents have expired. Claudia’s toothache can only be funny in a
movie – often a source of merriment in slapstick films, but in FAMILIA
RODANTE the trip to the dentist allows Ernesto to make a move on his
sister-in-law while his wife is safely involved with her dental pain.
Someone else’s discomfort is often a source of humor in classic
comedies. In fact, so much comedy is actually cruel. Having been in
such a situation doesn’t always make us compassionate; sometimes, we
laugh even louder because of memories of our own stupidity or
discomfort. Mainly we are just glad that “there but for the grace of
God go I.”
By the time he made FAMILIA RODANTE (his third
feature film), Pablo Trapero was ready for such an undertaking. He was
born in Ramos Mejía, Argentina in 1971 and graduated with a degree in
film directing from the Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires. In 1995
he produced and directed “Negocios,” a short film in which he cast
friends and family members, including his grandmother Graciana Chironi,
who would play the matriarch in FAMILIA RODANTE. Trapero’s first
feature film MUNDO GRUA was released in 1999 and received the Film
Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. His second feature, EL
BONAERENSE, premiered at Cannes in 2002. That same year Trapero created
Matanza Cine, which produces Argentinean films as well as co-produces
other Latin American films.
The following year Trapero decided
to make a movie from the script he had written in 1996 (his first
feature-length screenplay). This would be FAMILIA RODANTE. Although it
wasn’t autobiographical, the cinematic structure of traveling with
one’s family in a camper came directly from his own childhood during
which Pablo and his parents and sister saw Argentina from their “casa
rodante” (mobile home, which looks exactly like the one in the movie).
As he had done with his short “Negocios” and in his first two feature
films, he cast his grandmother Graciana, but here she would be the
matriarch of an unruly family. Although not really the main character
of the film, since the family with all its members is the principal
focus, Emilia (Graciana) is the spiritual center of the family and is
the one who provides the catalyst for the trip.
Trapero
thought this would be an easy production – just a relaxed road movie
with friends, cast, and crew. It was anything but that. Fortunately
none of the difficulties off-camera showed up in the completed film.
There were no problems with the cast, but the locations caused much of
the difficulty. Route 14 (popularly known as the “road of death”) is a
highly dangerous two-lane road, often used by trucks. Filming on that
road day and night was a nightmare, but at least no one died. The
scenes inside the camper were shot on location inside a second ‘58
Chevy with camper, but with breakaway walls for camera access. When it
rained, they parked and shot scenes which didn’t require outside views,
but the rest of the time they were moving down the highway with the
cameras on a platform attached to the sides of the camper. Trapero
wanted his cast to feel the discomfort of this long journey, so they
would act accordingly. They did. When filming was over, most of the
cast couldn’t wait to get back home in Buenos Aires.
In this
mix of comedy and drama, Trapero revealed one of his philosophical
underpinnings for making movies: “Films ought to give us the
opportunity of broadening our horizons, if not to change reality which
unfortunately is impossible. My films are clear and direct, but at the
same time the most important thing is not in the dialogue but within
the images.”
Sources:
• Isola Cinema
• JG Cinema.org,
interview with Pablo Trapero [2005]
• FAMILIA RODANTE DVD, with interview of Pablo Trapero
• FAMILIA RODANTE, IMDB.com
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