The Short Films of Luiso Berdejo

Posted by Todd Brown at 4:58pm.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Cult, Drama, Continental Europe & Russia.

One of the very best things about running Twitch are those moments when notes appear in my inbox asking whether I’ve ever heard of this great film by director X and, if not, do I want a copy? Of course I do, people! Of course I do! And such an inquiry recedntly led to the arrival of two short films by Spanish director Luiso Berdejo. That I’d not come across him before now is a little surprising, considering his most recent short (not one of these two, alas, I’m still waiting for a copy) was partially produced by the company run by Nacho Vigalondo and Koldo Serra – both great favorites in these parts – and that he is currently preparing his debut feature here on these shores. But trust me, if you’ve not heard of the man before now you’ll be hearing more from him in the future.

So, what do we have? Berdejo’s first two short films – La Guerra and Yo No Puede Caminar – have traveled well on the festival circuit and it’s dead simple to understand why. Beautifully shot and elegantly structured, Berdejo’s films have a sort of Kafka-esque quality to them. If the world his character’s live in is not openly hostile it is at least incomprehensible and alienating, both enticing and confounding and quite possibly deadly.

Narrated entirely in the second person – an interesting choice that adds some extra punch – La Guerra is the story of a young boy trying to survive the outbreak of a nameless war in his remote piece of countryside. His father has been shot. His mother kidnapped and very likely raped to death. All that remains of his family is this nameless young boy and his days-old baby sister, now on the run and hiding in a crumbling mansion, hoping to escape the searching eyes of a lone, fearsome soldier. Memories of the Spanish Civil War run deep in the country and while Berdejo is certainly far from the first Spanish film maker to tap into that well he is definitely one of the best to do so. La Guerra is a mournful, elegiac piece of work.

Yo No Puede Caminar is an entirely different animal, one that shares in the graceful structure and elegant style of La Guerra but plays it in a different arena, on a different scale. Again we have a young boy as our protagonist, this one seemingly afraid of everything but especially bugs. Luckily the boy’s father has a solution. Capture the object of your fear and place it in a jar. Place the jar by your bedside. Say goodnight before going to sleep. Say good morning when you rise. And soon familiarity will bring comfort and your fear will vanish. But in the boy’s case familiarity leads to obsession and obsession to tragedy.

Smart and soulful Berdejo is, like Guillermo Del Toro, one of those rare film makers who clearly recalls the darker edges of childhood and taps into those freely. He is the sort likely drawn to fairy tales and myth, but only tales of the Grimm variety rather than Disney.