After all the trouble I had confirming information about tonight, the experience of attending the screening of Calloused Hands at the Bolivar Hall at the Venezuelan embassy was surprisingly uneventful. I got the Tube to Warren Street and it was literally around the corner. Mind you, Google Maps had said I'd have about a six-minute wait when changing Tubes, but I got on a Victoria Line train immediately, so I think I beat their timings. And arrived with a few minutes to spare, which is always nice.
The lights were on in Bolivar Hall, reassuringly, and I opened the (very heavy) door to the lobby. And wondered where on earth to get my ticket, as there was no obvious box office. After mistaking a couple of people for ticket sellers, I identified the couple sitting either side of the low coffee table to the left as the ones I wanted. One had a book of raffle tickets, the other a cash box. Just as well I anticipated that they wouldn't have a card machine, and got cash on my way home. A notice on the table told of "suggested" donations of £7 for adults, £5 concessions. At least it was obvious where to go for the hall itself - a flight of stairs leads down to a room where you can just see rows of seats. There was a painting behind the couple selling tickets, but I felt self-conscious about staring over their heads at it, so I went straight in. They offered me the chance to leave my coat in the cloakroom, but I kept it with me.
First thing you notice is that the hall is boiling! Honestly, are they homesick for the heat of Venezuela?! The room isn't that large - there's a stage to the right as you come in, and tiered seating to the left. Tonight, they had set up a large screen on the stage, onto which they projected the film from an aperture in the far wall. The steps alongside the seating squeak rather alarmingly as you climb them. Otherwise, all is well. Interestingly, the armrests tip up. I honestly haven't seen that outside of planes.
And so to the film. Now, this is a film that was shown in the Venezuelan embassy, as part of the Latin American Film Festival. You'd think you'd know what to expect, right? Eh, no. The festival website describes it as "The struggle for identity in the face of a broken world..". Hmm. At least I'd have expected it to be about Latin American identity, maybe. Not really. The only things Latin American about this film were (a) that it was set in Miami (which is pushing it) and (b) it's a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy whose father (whom we never meet, he's in prison) is obviously Latino, by the boy's colouring. Considering that his mother is a blue-eyed, blonde, Caucasian woman. Oh, and his "struggle for identity" involves rejecting the path his mother's abusive, cheating, drug-taking African American boyfriend has laid out for him - into professional baseball, and doubtless an easy ride for himself - and instead embracing his mother's Jewish heritage, embodied by the clean-living young rabbi and the boy's workaholic, businessman grandfather. So, eh, where's the Latin American-ness? I guess the production team have Latin-American names, that's something..
As for the film itself, as you can tell from the above description, the story is one cliché after another. When the mother's boyfriend shoots the guy who was supposed to be looking after his dog, but neglected him, there seem to be no repercussions, apart from the boy's mother throwing him out when he comes home with blood on his shirt. We have a lot of racial stereotyping here - black men are lazy losers (witness the boyfriend's behaviour, and the testimony of the black woman that the boy's mother works with). Jewish men are upstanding citizens - the rabbi, the boy's grandfather (who may be offhand with his daughter, but somehow manages to find time for his grandson).
It's an enjoyable enough watch, and the acting is good. But it doesn't belong in the Latin American film festival, it doesn't deserve a cinema release - it's more a TV movie - and it certainly doesn't merit its rating of 8.2 on IMDB! Interestingly, some of the audience members shared my complaint about the start of the film, that the actors might as well have been speaking in Spanish, because we couldn't understand a word. I think that had more to do with the diction of the lead actor than anything else. I did actually wonder, at the beginning, whether it was in English at all..
Well, that's my curiosity satisfied then. Another film tomorrow, it seems, but I haven't finished going through the list of new films yet - only got as far as M! Watch this space..
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