From Afar

Description

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Lorenzo Vigas’s debut feature is a tour-de-force exploration of a relationship’s darker side. Armando (Alfredo Castro) is a middle-aged single man who makes dentures and spends his free time walking the streets of Caracas cruising for tough young men. His interest is less in sex than in power, situations where he has control over these macho boys in return for payment. The dynamic alters with a kid named Elder (Luis Silva) when the youth refuses to play by Armando’s rules, yelling epithets, stealing money and leaving. Rather than move on to another conquest, though, the older man becomes bewitched, stalking Elder in the streets and eventually inviting him into his home. Thus begins an elegantly gritty exploration of two confused and angry men negotiating a relationship that resides somewhere between lover and friend and a paternal father/son dynamic. Even as their home life gains stasis and balance, the power games that Armando seems unable to resist return to the fore. Vigas, in his debut feature, displays an assured sensibility, isolating his characters through the use of focus and close-ups thereby gaining a particular kind of emotional truth. His two leads complement this style greatly, with Castro’s mesmerizing watchfulness and Silva’s unpredictable physicality rendering their characters and the film unforgettable. —Rod Armstrong

Film Details