ICEBERG B
Spain (84 mi) 2011
d: Gabriel Velázquez
This is a uniquely stylized experimental film that simply
omits a narrative structure and instead defers to an atmospheric mood piece
that attempts to get under the surface of teenage adolescence where the viewer
often feels like they are assembling a jigsaw puzzle, finding and fitting
together the missing pieces. While
there’s a potential to be much more, this may ultimately be too spare and
emotionally oblique for most viewers, little more than a dizzying array of
images, yet the empty spaces in between are especially intriguing. Beautifully shot by David Azcano in the
director’s hometown of Salamanca, Spain, music by Pablo Crespo, much of the
film is wordless and only randomly intersects, telling the story of four young
teenagers, all non-professionals, including 13-year old Mauri (Jesús Nieto), a
moody kid seemingly left alone, where his bizarre behavior is borderline
disturbing, considering he has free access to a stash of weapons, seen from
time to time toying with a large knife or a rifle, also chasing after a German
Shepherd dog that may have swallowed something valuable. We infer he is the surviving victim of an
opening car crash, the cause of which is never shown or explained, only heard, losing
his parents when the car swerved off the highway and ended up in the nearby Tormes
River, which is then featured prominently throughout the film, like a central
character weaving in and out of the various stories. Rummaging through a pile of discarded
belongings scattered along the riverbank, he finds his father’s ring, wearing
it around his neck as a keepsake.
Isolated and alone, we rarely see this kid ever speak to anyone, but he
breaks into the local swimming pool only to lose his ring at the bottom of the
pool, chased out of the area by noises before he could retrieve it. Instead he observes two troubling older
teenage boys, Jota (Víctor García) and Simón (Juanma Sevillano), both incendiary
experts that love blowing things up who appear to be living in an abandoned
boathouse, whose pastime includes needlessly gouging fish at a nearby hatchery. They are typical rebellious hoodlums seen in
any town, but in this case also parentless kids, so they spend their time
committing petty crimes just for the thrill and satisfaction. They find the ring at the bottom of the pool
and abscond with the merchandise.
Perhaps the most poignant section revolves around a young
12-year old girl, Rebecca (Carolina Morocho), initially seen playing with a
group of other girls all wearing the pink coats and black pants of a Catholic
girl’s school uniform. Apparently
abandoned by her parents as well, the film interestingly never shows any adults
in the picture, so the viewer remains continually subject to the mindset of any
one of the teenagers, often feeling haphazardly constructed, moving quickly
from each character’s point of view as we watch moments of their lives
unfold. At one point Rebecca breaks out
in fashionable attire with a girlfriend applying makeup, where three girls romp
up the steep steps into the city nightlife area, with one returning back down
the steps accompanied by a boy, where in a quick cut afterwards it appears
she’s had a sexual incident, seen alone by the riverside cleaning blood off her
thighs, certainly a sad expression for her own carelessness. Jota and Simón are seen arriving by
motorcycle at gunpoint with Mauri, though they easily overpower him. When asked for his ring back, they throw it
in the middle of the river, where converging stories eventually meet. Rebecca, now dressed as a white angel with
wings, the picture of innocence or innocence lost, takes a pregnancy test where
the results fall into the river floating away at the same time Mauri wades in
searching for the ring. Ironically it’s
one of the older boys seen later in the film meeting with a pregnant
girlfriend. While there’s no definitive
outcome to any of the narratives, the film uses a minimalist kaleidoscope of
impressionistic images to reconstruct a scathingly empty interior landscape of
broken lives drifting aimlessly, where callousness, blighted emotions, sexual
curiosity, and the disturbing behavior of heartlessly unaffected Catholic boys
suggest a moral vacuum, creating a mixed portrait of loneliness and adolescent
indifference, where solitary souls appear like ghosts searching to find a way
in this soulless moral landscape.
