MIFF Session 1: LA LLORONA

Far from the Conjureverse jump-scare-filled waste of time this Guatemalan piece keeps its folkloric roots at a good arm's length as it has recent history to consider. It's far better for it.

A general from a deposed dictatorship is on trial for war crimes. He is besieged in his mansion by protestors who grow in number outside. Inside, his family cope around him, his wife guarded against his convictions that he can hear the monstrous figure of the title (who he hunts in the house with a pistol), his daughter who looks to his failing health with her medical qualifications, her daughter, and a security guard. If the old regime had grown demented the fragile balance in this beleaguered home is drying to dust.

One morning the new maid appears in the crowd as a young native woman with a haunting stare. She takes immediately to the child of the house and provides her with companionship and the kind of fun that suggests survival training. The general's wife has recurring nightmares of being a native woman under the genocidal oppression of the dictatorship. Her daughter is re-examining her position in the family and the crimes associated with the name. When the general's appeal reverses the previous conviction of genocide the crowds outside grow partially in protest partially in celebration of the end of the general's life. Faces from the files of missing persons from the time appear among the throngs.

This film, while it has a narrative arc, does not play out like a political thriller or even film directly about its politics. The figure of the Weeping Woman is kept ambiguous. Is she the new maid? Is she the spirit of the crowd outside who eventually seem to enter the grounds without force? Is she the times themselves come to take revenge?

La Llorona mythically drowned her sons and then herself but was refused the afterlife for her sins and condemned to walk the earth, taking more children. Alma, the native maid, the closest thing the film has to a physicalised Llorona is certainly accusing but her underwater games with the child feel more like training. It is only the past and its atrocities she seeks. Perhaps, she too, has transcended her folkloric role.

Jayro Bustamante's film of his country's living memory does little to retread the crimes but rather allow those who will know of them a kind of requiem. If the old man is to die it will not be an easy death, it will not be in peace. A patient, quiet gem.