The Undergrowth (2024)

According to the story, a man found an injured pig in Las Palmas. He did not stop at first but when he heard it squeal and speak like a human being, asking for his help, it promised him the whole land lying ahead of him. This fable opens The Undergrowth Macu Machín’s first full-length film as a director; it premiered at this year’s Berlinale in the Forum section. She sets her camera on her family: her mother and two sisters mixing vérité with staging to look into emotional expression after years of suppression.

Carmen, Elsa, and Maura have been coming once every 20 years to divide their inheritance piece of land by the volcano on the island. They are here to make one decision only. But how can you understand each other if you cannot put your feelings into words? Machín does well in showing the paradoxes of being relatives, with a slow-paced movie consisting mostly of close-ups of aging faces, hands, and objects, where you can be about to know someone’s most intimate side but never reach there. The sisters speak through silence and never shout; they seem to learn how to talk with each other as the movie goes on more than anything else that might have happened during shooting or post-production decisions taken by directors themselves. Yet when memories resurface it feels as if another world much freer lights up syllables reminiscing them.

The farm animals, almond trees, or domestic fireplaces used to mark out an idyllic past that they all share now forgotten among themselves. Today Carmen (who takes care of their house where she still lives) brings weak Maura together with herself (she has become Maura’s full-time nurse) so that they can meet those things that slipped from their memory. This dialectics between remembering and forgetting is then amplified by shaking earth’s crusts apart along with far-away grumbles under flaming skies sisters argue while the volcano wakes up.

Machíns’ house lies among mountains and forests far away from any other human dwelling, therefore, the camera moves within its surroundings during both daytime and night revealing everything that hangs in there however transient. Most of the time cinematographers José Alayón & Zhana Yordanova keep sisters framed apart thus giving each one separate attention on the one hand, and signaling a gap between them which produces hostility on the other.

Even though Macu Machín takes full advantage of being close to the people she films sometimes she knows when it is better to back off a little bit allowing her family members to use space within the movie for their own purposes: e it a battlefield or a place where comfort can be found. A very bright beginning, The Undergrowth becomes an emotional exploration into family relations uncovering ambivalence sleeping inside every silence and each gesture passed by siblings among themselves.

For More Movies Visit Putlocker.