Chile rattles Berlin with film about defrocked priests

Buenos Aires Herald
February 11, 2015

http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/181709/chile-rattles-berlin-with-film-about-defrocked-pries

Pablo Larrain, third from left, and cast from The Club.

BERLIN — A Chilean film showing defrocked priests protected by the Catholic Church and a Guatemalan film about the hard lives of Mayan coffee-farmers are making waves at the Berlin film festival.

Chilean director Pablo Larraín made The Club after he realized some paedophile priests had collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet or were ordinary criminals, and had never paid for their misdeeds.

“The Catholic Church for decades really has been spiriting away those priests, hiding them, shielding them from the public sphere,” he told a news conference on Monday to loud applause.

“That’s how we came up with this ‘club’, the idea of a club of lost priests.”

The film focuses on four priests living in a fishing village whose cozy lifestyle is shattered by the arrival of a priest trailed by a tramp who proclaims from the street that the cleric had forced him to have sex with him.

The accused priest commits suicide with a gun another house resident gives him to scare away the intruder. This leads to a visit from Father García, a Jesuit interrogator, who wants to know what happened and threatens to close down the retreat.

The film is cleverly plotted, with lots of dark humour, and shows the Church still protects its own.

“The judiciary has not been able to act, it is as drastic as I say,” said Alfredo Castro, who plays one of the priests. “I think all of the world wishes that people in this situation be judged on a par with anybody else in civil courts.”

Ixcanul (volcano in English) shows a Kaqchikel Mayan family living under the shadow of a volcano. The only child María (María Mercedes Coroy) is set to marry the wealthy Ignacio but loves farm worker Pepe, with whom she plans to elope to the US.

When Pepe jilts her and leaves her pregnant, the family must deal with the unwanted pregnancy as well as a plague of snakes that makes their farm unusable.

“It is a story of a woman that could happen anywhere, but this one is set in Guatemala, in a very particular Mayan culture,” director Jayro Bustamente said.

“And it is a good thing that the story of this culture and its people gets to be known better worldwide,” he added.

Ixcanul and The Club are among 19 films vying for the festival’s top Golden Bear honour.

Pattinson: paparazzi in different light

British actor and Twilight star Robert Pattinson says playing a photographer in his latest film has made him more sympathetic to the paparazzi.

In Life, Pattinson plays Dennis Stock, the man behind some of the most famous photos of legendary actor James Dean. The film explores the friendship between the two men as Dean was starting out in Hollywood in the 50s and Stock saw a star in the making, eventually getting him a cover spread in Life magazine.

For Pattinson, 28, whose boyish looks and huge following among teenage girls after his performances in the Twilight films have frequently made him a target of paparazzi, the film forced him to acknowledge that the job of celebrity photographer isn’t always easy.

“I did feel like being a paparazzi for a second. I do empathize with their plight,” Pattinson told a press conference at the Berlin International Film Festival where Life, directed by Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn, was screened this week.

“At the end of the day I feel they go home and beat themselves. That’s what I was doing to get into character,” he added, laughing. Pattinson said that, like many other actors, he had looked up to Dean, star of East of Eden, Giant and Rebel Without a Cause, who was killed in a car crash aged 24.

“I remember when I first started acting, sort of 16 or 17, I think a lot of actors have their James Dean phase where every audition, no matter what the part is, they come in and do a James Dean impression. I definitely had one of those,” he said.

Variety magazine said Pattinson is a “sly turn” as Stock in Life, and “brings intriguing layers of childish dysfunction” to the character. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Dean’s death, yet his appeal endures, something US actor Dane DeHaan, who plays Dean in the film, tried to explain.

“I guess he was such an open, emotional vessel that I think he tapped into human nature.”