Alambrado

A day without wind is the protagonist of the epilogue to Alambrado, an intense first feature by Marco Bechis, born in Santiago de Chile in 1958, of a Swiss-French mother and an Italian father, Argentinean by adoption for several decades, then kicked out of Buenos Aires for political reasons and landed in Milan where he began to work in the cinema. Windless days are rare in Patagonia, and when they do happen, they are painful. Superstitious tradition dictates that you don't go out on those days, that you do nothing more than necessary, even if possible - nothing at all. Waiting for the wind to return. Let the gusts, averaging 150 km/h, resume to envelop men and things. Silence, for those accustomed to the sound of the wind, is frightening, it instils atavistic fears. The first image of the film shows an enclosure, where brother and sister play incestuous lovers. Actually, it is Eva who leads the bored entertainment. Juan suffers from major communication problems: he watches when he can (in the only hotel in town) a TV quiz show in which he would like to participate. He is prepared: he knows all the names of the biblical dynasty by heart and, shyly, someone (and perhaps he himself) has sent in an application. Eva (the unprecedented, talented and attractive Jacqueline Lustig) is more aristocratic: she listens to language courses through recorded tapes, especially French, and would like to escape to Paris. The arrival of Wilson, who in that godforsaken and man-forsaken corner represents old Europe with its load of greed and cynicism, is the fuse that will set fantasies and resentments exploding.

Halfway through the story, Logan, for a moment, has the certainty of seeing his wife, dead for years, again in the customary morning greeting. An omen. Indignant at the arrival of the other Englishman, the gruff Harvey furiously begins to fence off his property: a desolate, endless heath. He forces his sons to follow him on this adventure with no return. At the edge of the world, the borders themselves blur, indeed they do not exist at all. The price to pay is the old man's death, a cathartic death that sets the children free. Judgement Day' is masterfully prepared by Bechis. The absence of music (the music is the wind) gradually creates a horror atmosphere (and perhaps it is no coincidence that Alambrado is reminiscent, at times, of Philip Ridley's The Reflecting Skin and also Murer's Höhenfeuer: glacial and chilling glances of adolescents surviving the void by taking possession of it; games of death in the mirror, in the hostility of nightmarish spaces).

Eva plunges her father's truck into the escarpment, causing the body to follow. The moments become frantic. Juan prepares the fatal trap for Wilson, who, carefree, is about to load Eva into the rented jeep to help her leave. A strong wire is placed in the middle of the road. Wilson is decapitated. The town priest - usually caught driving his motorbike without petrol - is the first to rush to the scene of the crime: he blesses what remains to be blessed. Madness has taken over.

Alambrado, the fence. A metaphorical fence that ruthlessly demands sacrifice. As by Jeanne Moreau in Until the End of the World, who lends herself to her husband's experiments, in another dimension away from the mad crowd. Or from Herzog the perennial extremist in search of the lost light, who shot Scream of Stone nearby, while Bechis ‘fenced in’ the first dream-film. (Aldo Fittante, "Segnocinema" n°56, 1992)