When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences changed its “Best Foreign Language Film” category at the Oscars to “Best International Feature,” it was designed to make the Academy Awards seem less Hollywood-centric, less like “English” was the official language of Oscar-worthy movies.
They’d invented “Best Foreign Language Film” in the late ’40s as an honor going to a film from a designated culture and country, with each far-from-Hollywood non-English-speaking nation submitting one film as their “best” in a given year. They removed “language” from the equation.
That leads us to “Reinas,” Switzerland’s official entry for this year’s Oscars, a period piece set in the turmoil of early ’90s Peru, a tale of all-Peruvian characters all speaking Spanish. Which is not commonly spoken in the country that produced it.
But when your writer-director is “Swiss-Peruvian” (Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro), she could submit her entry from whichever country wants to claim credit for it or perhaps back an Oscar campaign for the film.
The film itself is smart, sharp and immersive, a festival award-winner that takes us into a country collapsing into hyper-inflation driven by a government that teetered back and forth between military dictatorships and civilian rule, between Soviet alignment or seeking aid from the U.S.
The Shining Path guerrilla movement was carrying out murders and bombings. Power went out, off and on in the cities. And people were fleeing.
That’s what Elena (Jimena Lindo) has planned. She’s got a job lined-up in Minnesota, passports at the ready with Visas arranged for her two daughters –teen Aurora (Luana Vega) and much younger Lucia (Abril Gjuinovic).
But their estranged father, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina) won’t sign their permission-to-leave documents, and he has rights. He’s not overtly fighting this move over Elena’s plans for his little queens, his “Reinas.” Yet he never can seem to make it to the notary with her to sign-off and allow his kids to grow up somewhere more stable, less communist and/or fascist.
Carlos is “still trying to get back on my feet” (in Spanish with English subtitles) driving a cab, describing himself as an “actor” to the paying customers. To his ex and his kids, he’s “been in the jungle,” “working in security,” “a secret agent” or some such.
“The Great Carlos” or “Crazy Carlos” seems to know everybody. The hyperinflation hammering the economy has him cagily moving to the barter system — a sack of hard-to-get sugar in his battered taxi’s trunk, a spare tire traded for swimsuits for the girls, and so on.
He’s sketchy enough for us to wonder just how “connected” he is, which side he might be on, what that police-issued “special” ID might convey.
Oldest daughter Aurora doesn’t care. Self-involved and 15, she’s fretting over leaving her friends and her first boyfriend. Whatever Mom’s got planned, impulsive, naive Aurora is sure to interfere. Little Lucia wants to stay with Mom, but Aurora thinks Dad’s life in Lima would be more to her liking.
As Dad lies and hustles with his every breath, that plan may not be a plan at all.
Director and co-writer Reynicke-Candeloro maintains the mystery as long as she can so that we’ll stay engaged in a personal story of realizing “When it’s time to leave” your country.
Police and soldiers all over the streets, prices skyrocketing, everybody racing to exchange their cash for yankee dollars via street-vendors and a president finishing his litany of bad news with “God help us” on TV — those are signs it’s probably already too late to escape.
Elena is a travel agent, which helps. She lives with her mother (Susi Sánchez) and they are “privileged,” Elena is the first to admit.
But her oldest child hasn’t got a clue. And as the picture shifts to her point of view in its second half, we start to wonder how much havoc one teen can wreak as Aurora sprints towards a cliff only her mom sees.
Molina does a great job of skating the line between “lying loser” and “maybe a guy we’re all underestimating.” That mystery gives the viewer something to latch onto in a film that saves most of its suspense and “action” for the third act.
Lindo lets us see the wheels turning in a woman trying to charm her ex into saving her family, tamping down her fury at his procrastinating, his lies to the kids and the like.
And Vega testily gives us a taste of every headstrong teen about to “find out” we’ve ever been or known.
The payoffs to the various storylines are, to a one, something of a letdown. But “Reinas” is a Peruvian-Swiss filmmaker’s caution to the world about the risks of voting your way into political extremism, or helplessly watching as clueless others seal your country’s fate for you.
When authoritarianism hits the fan, cruel incompetence is the governing ethos. And not everybody’s a travel agent with an escape plan already lined-up, no matter what their ex or rebellious teen want.
Rating: unrated, threats of violence, teen drinking, adult themes
Cast: Luana Vega, Gonzalo Molina, Jimena Lindo, Abril Gjurinovic and Susi Sánchez
Credits: Directed by Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro, scripted by Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro & Diego Vega. An Outsider Pictures release.
Running time: 1:43