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Contributed by Sara Schieron
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Sunday, 23 April 2006 |
One
of the most beautiful films at SFIFF this year; SOLO DIOS SABE had a
place in Sundance and was picked up for release by Buena Vista. |
A moving journey film, this Brazilian Mexican co-production follows Dolores, a Brazilian studying in California, who loses her passport on a trip to Tijuana. There she meets Damian, who offers to help her while she's in Mexico and when getting a new passport becomes a dangerous task, she calls him for help. They drive together to Mexico City and on their three-day road trip Dolores discovers Damian's spiritualism and Damian slowly shows her his desire for her. When they finally make it to Mexico City, Dolores is beckoned home to Sao Paulo, where her spiritual awakenings begin.
Just hearing the elements, this film sounds somewhat unadventurous. Factually, SOLO DIOS SABE occurs in three countries, three languages, and covers three personal journeys. Themes of national, sexual and spiritual identity are central to the film and comprise the dominant issues for all three acts. The film is fantastically versatile. It's aesthetic is rather western, which makes issues of spirituality seem both accessible and concrete - as oxymoronic as that may sound.
The road-trip that occupies a major part of the film is a playful exploration of transition. Touching upon a theme of absence and presence, the couple finds their connection when Damian brings up their shared childhood as orphans. The notion that their parents were absent in body, present in mind is explored visually and dialogically throughout their discussions. The theme of presence and absence is one only understood by the spiritual characters. Dolores' grandmother sends her a portrait of a river with a note that reads "this is a picture of your absence", highlighting the presence of absence. Words like this from her grandmother, Dolores finds familiar, but when Damian shows Dolores how to connect with her lost relatives, she doesn't take his ritual seriously. Dolores' relation to this theme is more tactile, more literal. When she and Damian get water from a rural river, she lays on the ground and Damian traces her form in the sand. Repeatedly they leave their marks on the land that indicates their transition to other spaces.
What is most poetic and meaningful about the film is its treatment of spirituality. While issues of national identity are dealt with in a rather concrete way, (we actually travel with our protagonist through her home lands), the film's depiction of spiritualism is as physical and linked to the "real world" as it is linked to the universe of myth and divinity.
An innately spiritual character, Damian ritualizes all of his actions in a way that is linked to his Mexican tradition. Damian blesses his car for a safe journey, he lights candles and meditatively visits with his lost loved ones with great reverence. In contrast, Dolores embodies an intellectual hedonism that seems in conflict with either spirituality or faith. Her native religion of Carnaibo is discredited by her mother as superstition and seen as both impractical and purposeless. But when their faiths are tested, Damian and Dolores trade places, Dolores taking on her heritage as a Baita Priestess and Damian blaspheming the meaningless saints. Ultimately, Dolores' tactile relationship with divinity is not only explored, it results in what she chooses as her fate.
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