Peruvian filmmaker heads north in Aloft
Stark backdrop of the Canadian North perfect for poetic tale of dysfunction
ALOFT ★★★ 1/2
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy, Mélanie Laurent Directed by: Claudia Llosa
Running time: 116 minutes
The film opens with a frightening, high-pitched squeal of a sow trying to give birth, swiftly followed by the graphic delivery of her baby pig, swiftly followed by a couple — one of whom helped in the delivery — making mad, passionate love just outside the pig pen.
If nothing else, Aloft will allay fears that Canadians are a bland, boring people not given to exercising their primal urges. But the film is much more than that: it is a poignant and poetic tale of family dysfunction and search for resolution.
Though Aloft tells a Canadian story and is set in the ultra-polar climes of northern Manitoba and the Arctic, the film is actually a Spanish-French-Canadian co-production and is directed and written by Peruvian filmmaker Claudia Llosa. This is the first English-language feature by Llosa, who is best known for the stunning The Milk of Sorrow, an Oscar nominee in 2010 and winner of the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin film festival a year earlier.
Credit Llosa for quickly acclimatizing herself to Canadian winters and ensuing isolation in the North. She hardly selected the easiest of stories to mark her English film debut, but given her ability to craft something out of a subject so complex, expect to see her much in demand in Hollywood.
The film — which played at both the Berlin and Sundance film fests this year — operates in two time frames, 20 years apart, but flashes forward and back nearly seamlessly.
Following the pig birth and human lovemaking, the action starts with the woman featured in the aforementioned. She is Nana (Jennifer Connelly), a single mom having a hell of a time raising her two young sons, Ivan and Gully (played by real-life brothers Zen and Winta McGrath).
Making matters more difficult is the fact Gully is terminally ill and Nana is at her wit’s end trying to save him, so much so that she even resorts to seeking out an alleged miracle healer. Ivan, who is bitter and resentful of the special treatment accorded his brother, finds solace with his pet falcon.
Jumping ahead two decades, Ivan (Cillian Murphy) has a wife (Oona Chaplin) and a baby and works full-time as a falconer. And he is still bitter and resentful, largely because of the fact that his mother abandoned him as a child and is living in the Arctic Circle. Apparently, she now possesses magical healing powers.
Fate intervenes when a French journalist (Mélanie Laurent) drops in to visit Ivan at his Manitoba outpost and claims that she wants to interview him about his falcons for a documentary. In fact, her goal is really to meet Nana and to get the goods on her healing ways.
Regardless, Ivan reluctantly travels with her to the Arctic Circle, in search of answers that have long been tormenting him.
No question, this all makes for some tough sledding, and the tale rambles needlessly on occasion. On the other hand, the starkness of the settings, so strikingly shot, more than compensates — as do the performances.
Connelly, the American Oscar winner (for her portrayal of the recently deceased Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind) turns on the emotional jets as both the restless young and the self-realized older Nana. But it is Irish actor Murphy who steals the show as the ever-lost and brooding Ivan. Props also to Zen McGrath as the conflicted younger Ivan and to his bro Winta as the ill Gully.
And how about those falcons? Must have been some kind of fun both filming and keeping them from flying the coop.