To keep the promise she made to her dying mother, a young woman sets off to find her father, a fickle man she has never known. On the way, she discovers he is in fact dead, but, driven by the bewitching rhythms of the Maloya, a Reunion Island ritual singing and musical tradition, she does not abandon her goal: she must find her father.
Switzerland
Switzerland
[8]
My capsule review from my TIFF Wavelengths coverage for MUBI:
A true cinematic UFO, Cilaos comes on like a bastard combination of Pedro Costa and Owen Land. Centered around a joyous, charismatic performance by musician Christine Salem, Cilaos often feels like a raucous game of the Dozens, with Salem starting out singing about her desire to find her father, known as The Mouth. From there, she and her two male costars (David Abrousse and Harry Pérrigone) perform, declaim poetic aphorisms ("what does the tree say to the saw?"), and pose in various semi-plausible environments.
In terms of pacing, construction, and its phatic, off-kilter mode of address, Cilaos resembles eminent Land masses such as Wide Angle Saxon and On the…
این فیلم کوتاه تا سه روز دیگه در فستیوال اسکوپ نمایش داده میشه. حتما ببینید
www.festivalscope.com/all/film/festival/cartagena-international-film-festival/32-films/film/cilaos
Some interesting use of song as storytelling.
Better than a lot of experimental shorts I've seen lately.
Still not my cup o' tea... but I can appreciate the effort here.
Lead actress is committed and fierce. Well done.
Cilaos goes for extreme artifice, combining a '70s blaxploitation aesthetic, a capella musical numbers, and a rigorous style to tell the story of a woman searching for her father. The moody celluloid look is matched by the soulful singing of the three actors, especially Christine Salem, and Restrepo frames them often against empty backgrounds as they look directly at the camera. Throughout, a spirit of experimentation is as present as the narrative, using the same actor to play two different roles in the same shot and framing. In the final third, Restrepo abandons the narrative in favor of pure celebration, as the woman seems to assume her father's role and the short breaks down. It is a wonderful, mystifying short all around.
Good short film. It rides on a single narrative technique, but that one is powerful and many-headed. Dark-ish, smart, mysterious, it almost seemed to levitate once or twice.
I have never seen something like this ever before. Folklore distilled into the cinematic language. Incredible.
An odd, yet oddly compelling, short film that comes across like how a colonialist poetic musical shot by Pedro Costa might be. In my half-asleep state, late at night, I found this an oneiric delight.
A slightly disorientating but creative short. Mixing music, religious motifs and blaxploitation together sounds bonkers on paper, but it kind of works!
Touches every cord of Latin-American folklore without neglecting its radicality. Genius.
I don't know what the FUCK you just said, little kid, but you special. You reach out, touch a brother's heart.
