Humberto

VIFF 2025 Review: A Poet (Un poeta)

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Ubeimar Rios plays an aging poet who is a troubled man who can’t seem to do anything right in A Poet.

I started my film watching at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival with the Colombian film A Poet. It is a very bizarre story of not just the poet but the people in his life and who he intersects with.

Poetry has been Oscar Restrepo’s life but as he’s aging, he needs to face the fact he can’t make a living off it. He’s written two books of poetry as a young adult, but stopped after. Any job he’s tried, he’s been down on his luck. The guild of poets he’s with look down upon him, his 15 year-old daughter Daniela has no real relation with him, and even his ailing mother wonders what’s wrong with him. It’s gotten to the point his siblings want him to change his life around and get a job. He still has that dream in him of being as great of a Colombian poet as Jose Asuncion Silva.

One day, the guild of poets offer him a teaching job at a high school. As he’s teaching a class, he learns one of his students, a girl named Yurlady, has a gift for writing poetry and drawing. As he looks at her notebook, he is astounded by her work and sees a lot of promise in her. He looks at it as an opportunity to be a mentor to her to get a poetry scholarship. As he tutors her, he spends time outside of classes with her and tries to get to know her, her family, her bad living conditions, and her works. He sees a lot of potential in her to be the renowned poet he never could be.

Over time, problems arise with Oscar and his tutelage. A lot of students say he taught classes after he had been drinking. The guild notices him spending too much outside time with Yurlady and reminds him that could harm his reputation in his new job and even provoke nasty rumors. Even Yurlady questions Oscar in making a career in poetry. Especially since she has a huge extended family to support in the future.

Soon Oscar helps Yurlady get a spot on a national talk show to promote an upcoming meeting of young poets. The appearance is a success for her. Then the night of the poetry reading features a group of young and established poets from various backgrounds. The meeting is attended by Yurlady and some of her classmates. Yurlady’s reading goes well. In the evening, Oscar gets drunk with his colleagues and forgets about Yurlady. Later that evening, Oscar finds out Yurlady got sloppy drunk and is vomiting nonstop. Instead of staying with her at the hotel all night, he takes a cab and drops her off at her home’s doorstep.

That’s when the rumors get worse. That Oscar was careless, that he copulated with her. Oscar is fired from his job. The guild of poets will offer an out-of-court settlement for what happened provided Yurlady does a video explaining everything. Just in the middle of shooting, Oscar blockades and insists it not happen for personal reasons. The problem Oscar causes is so embarrassing, they give the family a cash payment settlement. Oscar is so defamed after that, Daniela wants nothing to do with him.

Just when it appears all is lost and as his mother’s health condition is deteriorating, Daniela finds something at her home. It’s her missing notebook that Yurlady found in Oscar’s car weeks earlier. Daniela sees Yurlady used the book to do poetry and drawings of her own. She also notices Yurlady wrote a letter to her specifically telling the whole truth of what did and did not happen that night. The letter also mentions about how she really feels about poetry. She loves doing it, but it’s not the passion Oscar wants her to have. It’s after that Daniela welcomes Oscar back into her life, but demands he smarten up. It’s at the very end with a family tragedy that the full reconciliation happens.

This film is both a drama and a comedy. Oscar and his character is what gives the film the biggest comedic elements. He’s a poet and a fail of a person. He’s like a lot of people in the arts in which they’re good at their craft, but they’re their own worst enemy. Often you will find them failing at everything else. Even making an alcoholic of themselves. That’s Oscar. The funny things is as you watch Oscar, you will see a lot of personality traits and habits that will remind you of a lot of poets in the past. I’ve even joked that poets are ‘too suicidal.’

Oscar is not as suicidal as your common poet but he is his own worst enemy, can’t think properly, can’t succeed at anything else, and finds himself back on the bottle again and again. He feels since he failed as a father to his daughter and as a poet, he can be seen as a mentor to at least one person in his life. He feels he can mentor a promising poet and share his dream of poetry with her and help her become a great. It first appears he failed at that too as he continues to make dumb decisions like making a minor part of the poetry scene. In the end, he made things worse for him and those around him. That appears to be the common theme of the film: Oscar feeling like a failure. We see it in how he messes up time and time again. We also see it as he looks at images of the poet Silva and the writer Bukowski of how he laments over his failure at literary greatness.

The film also has drama as it’s about his strained family relations and his own desire to want to be liked and admired. It’s also of his complicated redemption. It’s through Yurlady and his daughter’s notebook that he gets his unlikely redemption. It’s like the flower blooming out of a ground of ashes. It’s like the mess-up Oscar had with Yurlady eventually becomes what starts the path of the resolve between Oscar and Daniela. It is right at the ending it appears Oscar has the chance to redeem himself and really turn his life around for his family and his daughter.

This film is a great work from director/writer Simon Mesa Soto. His first feature film, 2021’s Amparo was an impressive breakthrough for him. Here, he follows it up with another great story about a troubled man who appears to be art itself in all of its triumphs and devastations, despite struggling to better himself as a poet and constantly messing up as a person. It’s a film that will impress you when and where you least expect it. Also it will become the story you didn’t expect it to be.

Possibly the most surprising thing of this film is that for the lead actors, this is their first-ever film roles. You wouldn’t notice it! Ubeimar Rios was great as Oscar. Playing a poet who is a man-child and makes life hard for everyone is quite an accomplishment for a first role. Also great is Rebeca Andrade for playing Yurlady. She did well not only as the young girl with dreams, but as the one person who could be a solution to Oscar in an unexpected way. Great performances also include Allisson Correa as the teenage daughter caught in the middle of this mess and Margarita Soto as the mother who tries to get Oscar’s head together.

This film is Colombia’s official entry for this year’s Oscar race in the category of Best International Feature Film. Additional awards the film has won are the Cannes Film Festival Jury Award of Un Certain Regard, Horizon’s Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival, the CineCoPro Award at the Munich Film Fest, and winner of the Bright Horizons Award at the Melbourne Film Festival.

The film A Poet is a unique comedy that’s also a sad comedy. It’s about a man who appears to be a poor excuse for a human being, but gets an unlikely redemption.

VIFF 2014 Review: The Incident (El Incidente)

Jon The Blogcentric2 Comments

The Incident (El Incidente) is a Mexican film about the mysterious and the supernatural.
The Incident (El Incidente) is a Mexican film about the mysterious and the supernatural.

The Incident was actually the very last movie shown during the VIFF. I actually saw four more in the VIFF repeats: some I will post my review in later days. The Incident turned out to be a good choice because I felt I was missing a film that was either envelope-pushing or edgy. This Mexican film turned out to be just that.

The film begins with two seemingly unrelated scenes. One is of a couple in a hotel just married and another is of an elderly woman lying on an escalator. Then cut to the first scene. Two brothers living in an apartment ion the ninth floor are confronted by a detective who thinks they’ve done them wrong. He has a gun and he’s after them down a staircase. Then a mysterious explosion happens. One of the brothers is shot in the leg. They go for help but once they hit the main floor, they find themselves back on the ninth floor. They’re both confused as is the hitman. They try and find a door to get out but they’re stuck. Adding to the bizarreness, whatever food or drinks that were taken from the vending machine in the stairwell comes back instantly. Then the brother dies. That leaves the other brother and the hitman stuck in the stairwell with no way out.

Second scene is a seemingly unrelated incident. A family head out on a road trip. It’s the mother, stepfather, teenage son and the six year-old asthmatic daughter. They pass a convenience store on the way to the camping ground. Then an explosion like the one involving the three men happened. The daughter has an asthma attack. They look for an inhaler but Daniel the son admits he forgot it at home. The stepfather accidentally broke the other one on the road. They go back to the convenience store only to find it empty. They try to head back home but the pass the campground sign they saw just miles ago. Meanwhile the daughter’s attack is worsening. Nevertheless the family keep coming across the same empty convenience store and pass the same campground sign. They too are stuck in the infinite standstill with no way out. The daughter does die.

The film returns to the stairwell. This time it’s filled with litter and is full of writing on the walls about various things including how long it’s been since the incident. It’s 35 years past. We see one elderly man and one middle aged man. This has been their ‘house’ during that time with nothing but food from the machines to eat and using water bottles for showering and using empties for sewage. Thirty-five years have passed for the family as well. Daniel is now a middle-aged man while his parents are elderly and unkept. The desert has been their home since and the ground is where the little girl was buried.

It’s all a mystery to get it solved even though they both know the cause of the problem. It’s because they won’t let go of the bad memories. The brother because of the shooting and Daniel for believing he caused his sister’s death. However it’s when one of the men in the apartment talks of a memory he had a long time ago of what happened when he was with his father when he accidentally died. After finally making sense, they’re able to get it solved and a door can finally be opened. After that, the people in both scenes can now live their lives in a forward motion. The daughter is still alive and Daniel can live his life even though it’s imperfect and full of problems. The two brothers and the detective also live their lives even though one will get a life sentence for a murder they commit later. However it’s at the very end when we see a newlywed couple in an elevator controlled by an elevator man named Karl that we learn it’s not all completely over.

This is one of those paranormal things I’ve never seen before. It consists of an everyday scenario then a sudden explosion happens. Then a near-fatal incident happens. After that, it’s nothing but a repetitive infinite that eventually leads to the vulnerable person’s death and everyone within that circle stuck in the same time and place forever. Four different scenarios of the infinite. All but one unrelated to the other and exactly thirty-five years apart. This may have been done before or it may be something original from director Isaac Ezban but it will haunt you. Especially seeing time elapse 35 years and how those involved in the two main situations all age staying stuck in the same place. It’s the creepiness of the bizarre that keeps you in suspense.

You hope those involved with the two scenarios will find a way out and they do. They’re also able to live their lives out, even though they’d live out a life that would have both Daniel and the detective lose in the end. But at least they lived lives where they moved forward. However even though we see the two live out their lives, we’re reminded from a moment seen during the opening scene that there was one thing unanswered: how it all started or who is behind it. We learn it right there at the end when the married couple get their own nightmare of the infinite. The ending can even leave one wondering if the couple will be able to work their own way out of the tragedy and the infinite that came with it.

As for whether it would be a crowd-grabber, that’s a question. I know crowds are willing to go to something as gruesome as Saw but you wonder if they’d go to something like this. It is something the thriller crowd would get their attention stolen with. It’s also a very smart and creative thriller that gives nothing away. I can see this being made into an American version in the future and can attract crowds of sci-fi. However seeing a six-year old girl die from asthma may be too much for them to handle. Seeing the long-haired old people might also freak them out.  Also this story may be a bit too bizarre for them to understand.

Kudos to Isaac Ezban for creating a creative story that’s both mysterious and smart, even if there were scenes that might creep many out. It’s hard to pick out the one single performance that was the best because there were so many good performances. Humberto Busto, Erick Camacho, Gabriel Santoyo, Hernan Mendoza, it’s hard to pick out the one who’s the best. It’s the ensemble of actors that delivered here. No one stand-out. All very good and all very believable.

The Incident (El Incidente) is an original thriller that may not be something that most moviegoers would want to see, including young fans of thrillers, but it’s very smart, very mysterious and worth watching.