Midway through the last Chilean film Pablo Larraín , the viewer attends the closest thing to a declaration of principles. It is a real bomb against each and every one of the common places that attend what time has given in calling maybe progressed. You know the word that the right in general pronounces with a face more of constipation than disgust. One could even venture that the conversation between Gael García Bernal's character and that of actress Giannina Fruttero works as a laxative; a liberating and lucid lavatory of prejudices. He says, choreographer and good people, that reggaeton sounds like jail music. And he adds: «It is a music not to think; to forget the jail in which you live and to create a jail in your mind ... It is a hypnotic rhythm that grieves you. It is an illusion of freedom ... Sex, yes; drugs, yes ... Someone convinced them that if they move the little bags they are much freer. That is falling asleep in defeat ... It is a culture of violence where women become sexual objects and man becomes a fucking male ... ». And the coda: «I fall for the reggaeton fashion pin».

To which she replies: «I like dancing because it's like being pulling, happy, with a red face, scribbling, hot, rich, crazy, moving ... And suddenly ... I'm surrounded by people. And they are all as hot as me, but moving as if they were pulling, but with music. It is rich, it is life. And I dance your life. If you are here it is because someone at some point got hot and had an orgasm. And today we can dance that orgasm ». And there, for now, everything remains.

Ema , that's how the movie is titled, is basically an exercise in freedom or, better, in the demolition of each of the common places that we accept as sensible, liberating and, for all the above, progressive. But, and this is the relevant, without falling into the self-complacent trap of nostalgic, reactionary or only conservative discourse. Unlike. "I think," the director reflects, "that a good part of the new generation is deeply political despite the opposite impression because it denies the political channels that we, the generation of its parents, have imposed. It is a generation that rises against consumerism, against the consequences of the latter in climate change and that abominates from the binary relationship of sex since it recognizes in it all the evils derived from possession: sexist violence. That is our heritage. They do not believe in romantic love for what they have of exploitation of the other. They are convinced that love can be lived differently, more directly and with a deep respect for each other. And they dance reggaeton. Reggaeton is a political attitude ».

Mariana Di Girolamo

Ema , to situate us, tells the story of a couple who, on a bad day, returns their adopted son. García Bernal, on one side, and, attentive, an immense and enigmatic Mariana Di Girolamo on the other. Let's say that the starting point is in itself the fracture of a taboo. "Yes," Larraín reasons, "it's hard to talk about it. When an older child who has lived through all kinds of calamities is adopted, the gesture of generosity of adoption does not always work ». And after this first break, all the others. The arguments and maps are over. Larraín's proposal sails without ties through bodies that are offered virgins to everything and everyone: pain, pleasure, sex and dance. Yes, you dance for the same reason that you live and, above all, you fuck, without barriers, without parental pin and because yes, by the inertia of the vital principle that moves everything.

Each of José Vidal's choreographies works like a bang; like the tremor of the flamethrower that the protagonist exhibits against the sky. «Contemporary dance works on the idea of ​​the bodies that are coupled. Reggaeton is friction. One happens on a stage and works with the idea of ​​control; the other appropriates the streets and is only understood from abandonment. You can dance reggaeton with a lot of people but you always dance it with yourself. It is an individual dance of a generation that lives individualism with a great respect for the community ”, says Larraín with the faith that always shows the convert.

If you want, the film is not so much a revolution as a vacuum jump within the director's filmography. Each film by Pablo Larraín to date has always insisted on focusing where there is no light. In their hands, the entire drama of the most merciless of dictatorships is aired in a dark disco (Tony Manero) , in a funeral home (Post Mortem) or in a house of seclusion for pedophile priests (The club). And each portrait of necessarily famous or mythical characters (Neruda or Jackie ) has consisted of an emptying exercise. The aesthetics in your hands is always, by force, political. Well, now the same, but from the urgency of a present that knows neither myths nor wounds; which is offered as a denial of all of the above. Only future.

The director tells that the shooting lacked script. It was about capturing as many ideas as possible in filming and then editing them. Larraín defines his film as a "punk fairy tale" , but the definition already carries a regret. It is this and quite the opposite. It's basically the opposite of almost everything. It is ... «an orgasm that is danced». .. That and "I fall in the pinch of reggaeton fashion."

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