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La tarea
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La tarea is by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo [1942-2020], a Mexican director who has been the subject of some favourable critical articles – including one by Robin Wood, a celebrated critic who subsequently became his collaborator on a (sadly unrealised) project inspired by Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). I sincerely hope Hermosillo’s filmography boasts better work than this dismal effort, a one-trick movie that shows the sexual back and forth between a man and woman (Maria Rojo and José Alonso) from the mocked-up vantage point of a video camera hidden in the corner of the room. To call a film with such an extremely limited visual field (mostly one wide angle shot) stagey would certainly be to miss the point of Hermosillo’s experiment. He is attempting something daring: the expression of a wide range of dramatic and comic moods within an extremely minimal format. Directors such as Chantal Akerman have done this brilliantly (for instance in her Le déménagement, 1993), but Hermosillo has only a trite script to work with – one that wears its cosily progressive sexual politics out on its ragged sleeve. © Adrian Martin April 1994 |
