This one’s for the poets and the aesthetes
Sofía is an architect, working with her husband José on a major building project. She misses her dead mother and dreams of the baby they’ve conceived. When an ultrasound proves she’s lost the baby, she says to the doctor, ‘But I did everything you asked me to,’ and we understand that this has happened before.
Buying a single cigarette on her way home and cracking open a beer, Sofía returns to the vices she’d left behind and, swiftly, she unravels. Visions of her mother now haunt her, and the dreams are nightmares where all the babies she couldn’t bring to term are deserted or cast away and left crying. Reeling with a grief too great to contain, she dives into a maelstrom of addiction, hitting such lows that her bed becomes any public bench or outdoor space against a wall.
Twelve Moons is Mexican writer / director Victoria Franco’s first solo feature film, told succinctly, artfully and near-wordlessly. It’s a sublime rendition of rock-bottom, unfolding like a slow dance. Shot in black and white, the lighting makes each line and shape sharper, playing on the art and design aspect of Sofía’s world before her fall. Pairing that with Sergio Armstrong’s careful cinematography (Neruda), the film is a visual triumph, however modestly executed.
Ana de la Reguera is outstanding as she embodies the anguish and bewilderment of Sofía’s character to such an extent that it really feels as though she has no option but to stumble along this self-destructive path. With an uncomfortably sudden timeline coupling Reguera’s fluid movement through sidewalks and motorways, it’s as if we’re watching an elongation of a short film. This one’s for the poets and the aesthetes.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor-Johnson
Twelve Moons is currently showing as part of the Adelaide Film Festival.
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