Director Oliver Laxe helmed this official Spanish entry into the Best International Feature Film Academy Awards competition. The synopsis for the film reads:”After a young woman goes missing in a rave, her father and brother brave the arid Moroccan landscape searching for her in a world on the brink of collapse.” It showed at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
CANNES ACCOLADES
Sergi Lopez (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), Mar’s father Luis, has his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) with him and Esteban has brought along his dog, Pipa. Pipa, a Jack Russell Terrier, and a second dog, Lupita, a Podenco mix, actually won the Palme Dog Jury Prize at Cannes. “Sirat,” the film, won the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Director Oliver Laxe (who stands 6’ 6 and ¾” tall) has made four feature films. This one was quite engrossing and seems to be “some Mad Max shit,” as a fellow critic said to me on our way out of the viewing. All of the rave participants at the opening rave, shot in Rambla Barrachina, Teruel, Aragon, Spain, look like extra from a George Miller “Mad Max” film. Their clothes (“Freaks” tee shirt, an homage to the 1932 film), hair (or lack of same), tattoos are all in style for an apocalyptic thriller. The group that Luis throws in with includes 2 Mad Max style vehicles, with 2 women and 3 men in the group.
Two of the men have lost limbs. One has no right hand; one has no left leg and uses a peg-leg contraption. At one point, when the prosthetic limb is removed, the amputated knee is made to appear to be a head singing a song about deserting the army, which is entertainment when you’re stuck in the desert. It certainly sums up this group’s attitude towards the military. Troops are constantly shown in the background threatening to break up the raves or take over the world or start WWIII. 
The first rave is forced to disperse. That leads Luis to beg the 5 Mad Max-like characters to take him and Esteba along to the next rave near Mauritania so that they can continue their search for Mar. Initially, the 5 rave attendees say no, because Luis is driving a Family Truckster van. They are gong to have to ford a stream at one point (Laguna de Tortjada, Tortajada, Teruel, Aragpm, Spain). The group correctly predict that Luis’ vehicle will have difficulty making it across that stream. Indeed, that turns out to be one of many death-defying adventures that the troupe will have as they press forward.
In a Cannes interview, Director Luxe said, “I think we were very bold. We were very daring. We didn’t measure things. We didn’t calculate. We just leapt into the abyss.” That’s for sure, and, as the not-that-merry troupe proceeds into the abyss, for 115 minutes we will see one after the other crash and burn in various ways. There are explosions. There are crashes. There is the threat of nearby armies that may wreak havoc.
SOUND
The film won a Cannes Soundtrack Award for composer Kangding Ray. Like “The Plague,” also screened at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival, this isn’t really music. It’s sound, cranked to the max and some of the descriptive terms I noted include: percussive pounding, hissing, rhythmic thumping, noise like rippling water. As Jade (one of the troupe) says to Luis, who comments on the non-melodic nature of the sounds, “It isn’t for listening. It’s for dancing.”
Jade will long be remembered for saying, “Blow it up!” in asking for more volume on the huge speakers the group sets up in the middle of the desert.
HUMOR
This trip through Hell reminded some of “The Wages of Fear” (source material for William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” film) but, for me, it was Mad Max Redux with occasional bleak humor (like the aforementioned amputated leg singing a song), or the recitation by one of the troupe that his father’s last words were: “Fuck! This is serious.” Jade mentions of the speakers she recycles, “You never know if this is the last sound it will make.” She’s right about that for the speakers, and she’s right about that for all of them, as they attempt to navigate their way from the first disbanded rave to a second one.
CONCLUSION
This 115-minute submission from Spain for the final Foreign Film Oscar list is an exciting edge-of-your-seat foreign film. It holds your interest. It may blow you away.
