LA NACION, Saturday October 18, 2008

THE OUTSIDER

Independent film a with Costa Rican twist.

By William Venegas, film critic for LA NACION.

After the premiere of his rotoscoped film Zipacna (2006), the Costa Rican director Joaquin Gil, who lives in the United States and is known as “Kino” since his high-school days in the famed Conservatorio Castella, has returned to share his feature film “THE OUTSIDER” (2008, 81 minutes) in a premiere sponsored in part by the U.S. Embassy and the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater last Wednesday.

It is an infrequent film, both in its narrative structure and its formal envelope, and requires an intelligent attitude from the spectator in order to absorb its character of social fable. A kind of “metafilm”, it is a film that revels on being a film: It paints an imaginary world in which animation and live action are evident and contrasting, sharing spaces without disguising the fact. It is “sustainable filmmaking”, made with alternative resources and alternative aesthetics, eschewing to “trick” the spectator with “special effects” or Hollywood conventions.

It has a Science-Fiction plot, with humans fighting inimical aliens, but where the impossibility of a victory from either side threatens all life in the Galaxy. In a kind of medieval God's Judgment, two random champions will decide the war's destiny in a hand-to-hand fight: a fully-armed cyborg against a pregnant, unarmed woman who in her moment decided not to terminate her pregnancy.

While the TV speaks of the War, to the Presidency of the United States has arrived a Bishop who creates a State Church that brands the invasion a hoax based on the absence Biblical scripture dealing with extraterrestrial life. Despite the edicts, the war is a grim, cruel reality out there in space, where the Asimov Wheel must be defended and the Clorito Picado Hospital Ship ( in nods to the great New York writer and the Costa Rican researcher and Physician ) bears the wounded and dying to a fast-shrinking Human Base.

Not because he is also a Costarican, but because of the evident merit of his work, the music soundtrack composed and performed by Sergio Sasso deserves admiration for its sharp counterpoint to both the visual creativity and the narrative. Great work. The performances are less convincing and in this critic's eyes amount to the weakest link in the work (Note: Fellow critic Mario Giacomelli from Channel 7 TV dissents, praising Catie Boles' performance as Gia Banner, the stranded pilot as “very moving”). We wish for more exhibitions for the benefit of cinema lovers, and have no doubt that many a screen will be a refuge for this unusual film.

*** Three out of five stars, (one less than Lord of the Rings.)

--Translation and notes by Luis Alvas, English editor at LA NUBE 9.