Inverness Film Festival: Utama (12A)
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5 stars
From the start of Utama – meaning ‘our home’ in the language of the Quechua people – the simple way of life of an elderly couple in Bolivia with their flock of llamas seems timeless.
Victorio (José Calcina ) and his wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe ) have their tasks – Sisa heading out to the village well to fill up two buckets of water every day, Victorio leaving home at sunrise to take the llamas to graze on an almost bone dry plain. Both tasks take much of the day.
It's a timeless way of life, but it is running out of time. The rains are late this year, people are already leaving the area for the city, the traditional way of life is being killed by the drought.
But Victorio has another reason too for wanting to hold on and his laboured breathing is a soundtrack of the film as he struggles to hide his coughing from Sisa.
He can seem brusque with her, sharply replying “So?” when she tells him of her struggle to get water once the village pump fails.
“It’s your job to get the water!”
Yet when we first meet him, sitting on the rocks he visits every day so that the llamas can find food, he picks out a beautiful white stone and presents it to Sisa when he returns home at night. A love gift. She smiles with pleasure and adds it to a small pile of treasured stones in a basket tray, hinting at their lifetime of love together.
The landscape looks gorgeous in the hands of director and former photographer and cinematographer Alejandro Loayza Grisi. He and his cinematographer Barbara Alvarez love to fill frames with the white dusty plain, enormous pale blue sky and into the centre, Victorio walks in front of or behind his flock of white llamas with their pink ear ribbons.
When grandson Clever (Santos Choque) arrives with some supplies and something important to tell his grandparents, he falls victim to Victorio’s anger and resentment at Clever’s city-based father – calling his grandson “llokalla” or brat.
The contrast between Clever’s urban ways, his generation’s obsession with the mobile phone, and the graft of Victorio and Sisa’s basic lifestyle, is stark.
But the young man pitches in and helps, going grazing even though with headphones on and hoodie hood up. And Clever rediscovers the way of life being threatened.
He joins Victorio in a traditional ritual where locals climb a mountain to sacrifice a llama to “sow water” before holding a meeting to discuss what they do to address the water crisis.
Out with the llamas on the plain, Victorio describes the death of the bird of prey, the condor, to Clever.
“It flies to the top of a mountain, folds his wings and falls,” he says, describing the bird’s chosen death.
Clever asks: “Isn’t the condor sacred?”
“Sure he is. But what’s important for you to know is, from that moment, a new cycle starts.”
This is a film that reflects the big threats to traditional cultures – climate change and urbanisation – but at its heart, it's about choosing how to live and to die and what to pass on.
“Walking keeps me alive,” the old man says at one point.
The film’s slow pace matches the relentless nature of Victorio’s stubborn campaign to keep going, until a breathtaking, surreal encounter. MC
QUOTE:
Sisa: I have to walk a long way for water, I have to go to the river now. You’ve got to help me.
Virginio: I have to graze the llamas.
Sisa: Walk them over there.
The film is the first release from new independent Scottish distribution company Conic Films which wants to bring world cinema to Scotland and the UK.
The latest Eden Court Cinema programme says that Utama returns to Eden Court Cinema from Friday, December 2 to Thursday, December 6, but according to the dates at the back of that programme, Utama is there December 9, 12, 14 and 15 – so please check with the Eden Court box office. Call 01463 234234.
