On October 21, 2007, at the Puerto Montt detention center, 1,000 kilometers south of Santiago, Chile, around ten teenagers aged 14 to 18 died, asphyxiated or burned, in the fire they had started. during a desperate uprising in preparation for an improbable escape. The young prisoners could no longer bear the humiliation, abuse and torture inflicted by their guards.
Sixteen years later, Claudia Huaiquimilla pays tribute to them with her film Mis Hermanos (“my brothers”). She created a story that could very well have been what happened, but could just as easily happen tomorrow. The difficulty of making a film in prison is probably insurmountable, the reality of confinement is elusive. This film is based on the story of two brothers, the youngest wanted to be part of the “coup” organized by the local boss. The eldest wanted to leave the little one out of it all, but he ended up giving in to his whim, and this is the result: they both end up in jail. Reproaches and guilt are arbitrated by a social worker who can’t help it.
At what moment, in the heart of the spectator, these young delinquents, thieves, violent, rapists, murderers for some, by accident perhaps, infested with the worst sexist and racial prejudices, culturally impoverished by deficient education, morally destabilized by an environment toxic family, sexually anesthetized with drugs, after how many minutes of film, after having accepted them as characters, the spectator takes an interest in them, lets himself be softened, forgets what they did and which he never knew, that no longer matters, they are there, they exist, they have human rights, the right to manage to make their situation less inhuman inside this prison to which the spectator has become accustomed to it, from when the spectator no longer supports the abuse that the guards inflict on these teenagers, and the helplessness of the social worker, the abandonment of their mother, the helplessness grandparents? I don’t know. But, in the end, the spectator realizes that these two brothers have become his heroes, and that he loves them to the point of dreaming of a successful escape with them.
Lack of personal commitment
Almost the opposite happens in Nora El Hourch’s film. HLM Pussy. Three suburban teenagers, wanton and energetic, send their male counterparts to the roses. They are funny, friendly, even if, after a while, they become a little tiring. One of our three pussys is being harassed by a fearful guy. To act like a grown-up, the other two shoot a hidden camera video and share the joke on the networks. From there, they are no longer tiring, but execrable, as much as the parents, the teachers, not one to redeem the other. We start to hate them all.
Nora El Hourch says she made this film after being sexually assaulted. Very good for promotion, except that that’s not what his film is about, which, as a result, falls into almost all the clichés of the genre.
The absence of personal commitment from the director is also what prevents the film No waves to be big. In a universe quite similar to that of HLM Pussy, with identical discouraging teenagers, Teddy Lussi-Modeste’s film tells the story of a teacher (François Civil) accused of harassment by one of his students. The film is especially valuable for the hypocrisy of the head of the establishment, the cowardice of his colleagues, the paradoxical muteness of the informer. As in HLM Pussy, the director of No waves was inspired by personal experience. Except that the character in the film does not do justice to the biographical richness of his model. The gypsy that Lussi-Modeste was is not there, he is missing, homosexuality is not enough to give the character depth. Next time, let’s hope.
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