Perspectives
Dir. Frank Spano

The starting point for the action in the film is the real extremal situation, resurrected on screen with documentary shots of the wild outrage of nature. Streams of rain water, sweeping away bridges, houses, streets. Unprecedented flood happened on the North cost of Venezuela in 1999 – with 15 thousand victims and many people disappearing without a trace. Information about such disasters is branded upon our conscience just like that – in illegible details and panoramic shots that all look alike. The author of the film, famous actor Frank Spano, who’s debuting as a director, changes wide shot for a close shot, whipping away two destinies from this tragic whirl. He also points out the question, which is also relevant for the audience: how do you survive, when everything is lost, when your past has been swept away, and you are standing all alone with your grieve.

Two protagonists: 40 year old Isabel and 17 year old Yudeixi leave for Isabel’s native land – Spain, or to be more precise - the Canary Islands, to start a new life and get a chance to have some decent – maybe not future, but at least the present. They have nothing in common, except the loss of their loved ones: Isabel has lost her husband, and Yudeixi’s lost her child. Isabel – a medical nurse, is a beautiful intelligent woman, filled with inner grace and unbearable pain in the same time. That’s the way this character is portrait by the Spanish actress Rosana Pastor. Her adolescent companion Yudeixi has grown up on a street and was living on picking; she is daring and rebellious. Despite the fact that Isabel perfectly recalls the face of the girl, who has robbed her in a hotel’s hall just before the flood happened, she is helping her to get on a plane, having presented herself as her mother. From this moment on, their lives are tied together, despite that they differ in just about everything – their outlooks on life, their habits, manner and the way they talk – slang words that Yudeixi uses is hard would be hard to find in a dictionary. And this contrast creates the main strain of the action, centering on the development of the heroines’ relationships, who has suddenly become emigrants. Isabel will be telling her young friend that “thieving means slowly dying”, and will explain who Hitchcock is and what suspense is. Thought soon she will be forced to forget her principles and start making money for a living by transporting illegal Peruvian workers from the airport. And one day Yudeixi will run off with a big sum of money – an advance received by Isabel from their employer – and tries to live independently, working as a dancer. Fabulous Canary Islands – a delightsome place for Russian tourists – is shown her from a different perspective: without common landscapes, but through the eyes of those who doesn’t relax, but works.

The final can be called a happy ending – Yudeixi comes back to Isabel with the money, she earned. She has now started to think about her life and not just about how to survive, like before. Together with Isabel and a little Peruvian boy she saved, they come back to Venezuela. And that’s how the transformation of alienated people to a real family has finally happened – as well as Frank Spano’s debut as director.

Tatiana Vetrova