Empty Nest

Empty Nest

92 Minutes

Some films you feel more than see. These films generate a mood which consumes you totally and goes beyond merely the visual and auditory senses. Daniel Burman’s Empty Nest is such a film, the mood it generates being a passionate nostalgia, a lust for a past perfected through the mind’s ability to rewrite history and experience. Like the works of the magic realists (or more recently Charlie Kaufman) Empty Nest scrambles time and place to meet its own needs, focusing specifically on one man’s journey towards embracing what may or may not be a rare condition in which one starts to remember things that did not happen, replacing their real memories with those of times in which they fulfilled their inner desires.

Empty Nest is centered around Leonardo (Oscar Martinez), a famous playwright recognized constantly on the streets of his city, and what is essentially his mid-life crisis. Leonardo is married to Martha (Cecilia Roth), and together they are a couple more interested in the concept of each other rather than the execution. Leonardo sees Martha as a project he can’t control- she sees him as an object for study, a sort of thesis on modern man that she was unable to complete while a graduate student and now that she has dropped out, is all that keeps her stimulated. While their children were still living with them, the two failed to notice this in one another; but without the children to dwell on, their marriage loses the substance that held it together. Martha immediately notices that Leonardo is withdrawn to the point of alienation; he is unwilling to see his children off and prefers to relish his memories of them rather than sully those with the truth. Leonardo simultaneously notices that Martha is more interested in parties and sociological theorizing than being alone with him.

Despite laughable attempts at therapy and advice from friends, the couple soon becomes isolated from one another despite living in the same space. Martha returns to school, and Leonardo pursues an advertising gig and an affair with his orthodontist that may or may not have actually been consummated. It isn’t that the film is thin on plot or needs a three tier structure; quite the opposite. Burman’s direction and writing allow the film to move at a pace that is technically glacial but never feels boring. The casual but perfectly moody cinematography add to this effect, at times recalling the calmer moments of the French New Wave and at other times bringing to mind Woody Allen’s early attempts at recreating Fellini. But it’s specifically the film’s moments of magical realism that make the entire work so beautiful and dreamy, a successful tribute to the way our minds operate, in all their complexity and flaws. Words can’t possibly accurately describe why the sudden appearance of first a marching band and then an entire dance ensemble during Leonardo’s “run-in” with his orthodontist in a mall work so well; it’s a moment that must be seen to be believed.

Burman’s cast deserves a fair portion of the credit as well, enabling a film that could have very easily come across as pretentious whimsy to instead feel authentic and emotionally grounded. In particular, Martinez is brilliantly subtle when he needs to be and dynamically charismatic when he can get away with it. The way he acts with each and every inch of his face makes it hard not to think of Robert de Niro, before he became a caricature of himself. Roth also brings a wonderful vitality to her role, allowing Martha to become less a stereotypically callous shrew and more someone who, rather than take her husband’s approach of mentally altering her past, actively pursues finishing the things she was not initially able to.

Between the excellent script and cast and Burman’s uncanny directorial vision, Empty Nest is a bold, perfectly executed film that potentially marks a new turn for Latin cinema. Burman has shown himself to be an auteur more than capable of eventually becoming an intimidating force in the world of cinema and if he can continue his recent winning streak, it isn’t hard to imagine his films being held in the same regard as the works of Cuaron, Allen or even Fellini himself.

by Morgan Davis