This promising debut feature opens up gradually, like a fragrant but potentially poisonous night-blooming flower. Filmed largely in the crumbling mansion in Caracas owned by Armand’s own family and starring the struggling residents who live there, the film is a sort of parable about the parlous fortunes of Venezuela itself. Central character José (handsome José Dolores Lopez) shares one set of rooms in the weathered villa with his his wife, daughter and grandmother Rosina (María Agamez Palomino), who was formerly the maid of the house for the wealthy white-skinned family who lived there a generation back.
As the Venezuelan economy lurches ever closer to meltdown, with empty supermarket shelves and increasingly desperate people, José begins searching the building with a metal detector, convinced there’s some great fortune remaining there from the colonial past, if only he could find it.
Jorge Thielen Armand coaxes spontaneous, graceful performances from the mostly non-professional cast, while the supernatural elements and hypnagogic rhythms are reminiscent in some ways of the work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, but with less whimsy and a more quotidian approach to narrative.
