*** This review may contain spoilers ***
*Plot and ending analyzed*
Camila (1984) is a pompous, excessively melodramatic story that rarely rises above the crass emotionalism of a cheap novela, or tele-novela (a soap opera in Latin-American countries). The film stock reduces it even further, since it seems to have been shot on some 'video' camera. The angles are so dull and boring, there's hardly any life in this film at all.
In the 1840's of Buenos Aires, Argentina, an utterly lifeless respectable woman, who later falls into the category of "demimonde", lives her boring life with her tyrannical father, who is overbearing, imperious and autocratic. At an instant, there's not much for us to root for, since these wealthy people are so repulsive. Yet the director, María Luisa Bemberg, thinks we should side with Camila, because she reads a few "banned" books. The director throws everything at us from afar, from the drowning of some pet cats on the tyrannical father's order, to the beheading of the bookseller. Clearly, she's not one to engage the audience with slow-nuances, but merely histrionics.
Enter some Jesuit priest, Ladislao Gutiérrez, equally boring and without merit. Well, Camila takes to him right off. I can't see how she falls for him so quickly, he's about as empty as a bare bottle that's molded up in the cellar. The rest of the story has the authorities searching for them after they've consummated their "love". Everything is brought down by a priest appearing out of nowhere, who finds them in some local village and they are executed.
The film is pathetic, emitting little sympathy from clear-headed viewers; it is gut-wrenching in the extreme. Instead, it seems to be more of a tome or dictum intending to show how the affairs of the heart override any social order.
*Plot and ending analyzed*
Camila (1984) is a pompous, excessively melodramatic story that rarely rises above the crass emotionalism of a cheap novela, or tele-novela (a soap opera in Latin-American countries). The film stock reduces it even further, since it seems to have been shot on some 'video' camera. The angles are so dull and boring, there's hardly any life in this film at all.
In the 1840's of Buenos Aires, Argentina, an utterly lifeless respectable woman, who later falls into the category of "demimonde", lives her boring life with her tyrannical father, who is overbearing, imperious and autocratic. At an instant, there's not much for us to root for, since these wealthy people are so repulsive. Yet the director, María Luisa Bemberg, thinks we should side with Camila, because she reads a few "banned" books. The director throws everything at us from afar, from the drowning of some pet cats on the tyrannical father's order, to the beheading of the bookseller. Clearly, she's not one to engage the audience with slow-nuances, but merely histrionics.
Enter some Jesuit priest, Ladislao Gutiérrez, equally boring and without merit. Well, Camila takes to him right off. I can't see how she falls for him so quickly, he's about as empty as a bare bottle that's molded up in the cellar. The rest of the story has the authorities searching for them after they've consummated their "love". Everything is brought down by a priest appearing out of nowhere, who finds them in some local village and they are executed.
The film is pathetic, emitting little sympathy from clear-headed viewers; it is gut-wrenching in the extreme. Instead, it seems to be more of a tome or dictum intending to show how the affairs of the heart override any social order.