★★★★☆
8 August 2019
A movie review of PETRA. |
"Isn't everyone interested in money?" Marisa (Marisa Paredes)
Like Steven Soderbergh's CONTAGION (2011), PETRA starts with chapter two. Petra (Bárbara Lennie) arrives at a palatial residence in the Spanish countryside to undertake an artist's residency. She wants to use art to find the truth. The film is obsessed with hidden truths. Petra's art is navel-gazing. She records herself on camera and then paints. We come to realise it's because she only knows half her heritage. Petra's mother Julia refused to talk about who her father was, even on her deathbed. Selfishly guarding secrets comes back to haunt everyone. Though, what must Petra's father have done to Julia to cause her utter brittle silence?
While constantly thinking about yourself may appear self-obsessed, examining and knowing yourself is a different matter. PETRA's ensemble are pushed to their emotional edge. How many look haunted and traumatised. The audience squirms in their seats without being able to look away. PETRA is a 107-minute melodramatic car crash.
Like Steven Soderbergh's CONTAGION (2011), PETRA starts with chapter two. Petra (Bárbara Lennie) arrives at a palatial residence in the Spanish countryside to undertake an artist's residency. She wants to use art to find the truth. The film is obsessed with hidden truths. Petra's art is navel-gazing. She records herself on camera and then paints. We come to realise it's because she only knows half her heritage. Petra's mother Julia refused to talk about who her father was, even on her deathbed. Selfishly guarding secrets comes back to haunt everyone. Though, what must Petra's father have done to Julia to cause her utter brittle silence?
While constantly thinking about yourself may appear self-obsessed, examining and knowing yourself is a different matter. PETRA's ensemble are pushed to their emotional edge. How many look haunted and traumatised. The audience squirms in their seats without being able to look away. PETRA is a 107-minute melodramatic car crash.
Surely all have a right to know who their parents are? Not knowing for Petra is worse than anyone she can imagine. The film puts that to the test.
The residency is at the home of Jaume (Joan Botey), who Petra suspects might be her biological father. Jaume is Donald Trump. What happens when you are a cruel immoral narcissist, with money and fame. He is a vile one-note villain used to bring out the traits in those around him. You feel for all the characters, bar him. Jaume is so despicable, you wonder if a player is going to take revenge. Think Michael Gambon's William McCordie in GOSFORD PARK (2001). The abuse of power by the lord of the manor has far from disappeared.
PETRA hammers the audience with piercing drama, while using stylised camerawork, chapter headings, a non-chronological timeline, etc. to hamper descent into soap opera and crass voyeurism. The chapter headings reveal what we are about to witness, but still do not lessen the tension. The camera often drifts away from important conversations. The film seems to be saying to the audience: Do not relish the implosion of all who come into contact with Jaume. The film seems to want you to care, while also keeping an intellectual distance. The repetition of how the camera moves, single takes with slow zooms, goes beyond gimmick into the realm of academia.
"What I have can't be fixed by pills," Petra
While PETRA is about the carnage inflicted on a family by just one person, the denouement offers hope, without triteness, in the form of breaking vicious cycles.