Caótica Ana (2007) Reviews

• Utterly Complex but Brilliant

  Imdbidia2011-02-12

  Chaotic Ana is Julio Medem's ode to the female and the myths of the motherland. Despite some bloody and shocking scenes, is also an ode against male violence, wars, and those individuals who starts them; however, the film also shows a blind faith in the good of human kind, despite the tragedies and havoc that we create and surround us. Moreover, Chaotic Ana is both a reflection on death and the void left by the departed - Medem's tribute to his late sister Anne. The film is also an invitation to see Art as a form of individual expression, a timeless biography of the living, and a living legacy of the deceased. In his odyssey of discovery of The Female, Medem takes us from the cave to the skyscraper, with the ocean as an element of continuity. This is a very intimate, personal film that touches universal themes and myths(from Oedipus and Electra to primitive matriarchal mythologies) to share personal experiences, feelings and ideas that relate to Women and the Female. The editing is complex and very dynamic. Every single small detail in the film has an intrinsic connection with the story, is part of it, not as an object, but as object that conveys meaning. I especially liked some of visual shows shown in the House of the Artists. The film continuously unsettles the viewer. However, the violent, shocking and sex scenes have a purpose within the story. The actors are all OK in the movie. But this is not a movie for the actors to shine, but a movie in which the script, the story, is what matters. The actors are here just as Medem's "mediums". In fact, Medem has curated this film to the smallest detail. You cannot watch this movie as if you were watching a normal movie, not in the same mood, or with the same intention or attention. This film requires of you 1/ A willingness to let the odd, the chaos and surprise express themselves freely. 2/ To embrace Medem's personal story being shared with you. 3/ An attention to the detail. 4/ Have into account that this film is personal as it is related to the figure of Medem's late sister, who was also a remarkable painter, and that many of the references and scenes in the film are related to her. Movies like this are a challenge for the viewer and are never popular or highly rated. But this is just a sign that most people don't watch movies, just see them.

• The most intense movie I've ever seen

  adlad32007-11-04

  I have been lucky to see Julio Medem's films at several film festivals over the years and he always manages to captivate his audience. I was fortunate enough to attend the UK premiere of his new masterpiece Caotica Ana at the London Film Fstival recently. He is arguably one of Spain's all time most important film makers, for example Stanley Kubrick said that Medem's "The Red Squirrel" was one of his all time favourite films and Steven Spielberg offered Medem the chance to direct "Zorro", which he later turned down to spend more time developing his own movies. Caotica Ana is one of Medem's best films to date, beautifully filmed, beautifully acted and with an intensely captivating story of reincarnation and never ending love. Manuela Velles as Ana is enchanting and lights up the screen, Charlotte Rampling turns in a good performance in her first ever Spanish speaking role, Bebe provides much laughter and Asier Newman is simply hypnotic, exuding vulnerability and charisma. Sequences are at times "Chaotic" as per the title but are necessary to build emotional attachment to the story. The change between chaos and calm being personified in many ways through Ana's final journey to New York by boat, travelling on stormy and more tranquil waters. Overall a must see movie, very different to anything you have ever seen before and a real homage to the importance of women in society throughout the ages.

• Weaving, magical, masterful

  tim-764-2918562012-03-17

  Having now seen all six of Medem's DVDs in his Spanish released "Collection", I was worried that this last one, would be rubbish. Other reviews and reviewers hint at such but I found it utterly intense and mesmerising. Anyone having seen more than one of Julio's films knows that logic often disappears and an adult fantasy awaits. Beautiful sexuality, strange and exotic visuals, stunning landscapes and a chequerboard of interlocking story pieces that sometimes sort of connect. I loved not knowing what was going to happen next, or who Ana's next incarnation was going to be. Instead of trying to make sense of it all, just light a candle of two, turn out the lights and let it overwhelm you. This is a director of immense imagination and he has the guts to follow them through and onto film. The ravishing paintings done by his late sister alone are worth seeing. Here in the U.K., I've not seen any of the regular actors of Medem's in any other director's films. So, it was nice to see the reassuring maturity of Charlotte Rampling and her character as the Patron of the Arts that takes Ana under her wing perfect for her and she plays it superbly, of course. Chaotic Ana isn't my favourite Medem flick, The Red Squirrel is. All his films are quite long and meandering and it is this unpredictability and superb visual tapestry that makes me rate him so highly.

• Ordered Disorder

  tedg2008-07-26

  When you align yourself with an artist, it is a true commitment - as deep as any in life. It should not be taken lightly and I suppose the commitment can be as deep as that which you, the art and the artist can permit. That can be deep, permanent and resilient, and such is the case with myself and Medem. There are three living filmmakers who I trust in this way. When you do this, when you braid imaginations a sketch, a hint, has import. If it suggests that it should have been finished and is not, the difference becomes artistic. If it fails, eve if it repulses, it matters. This film is less perfect than his two previous. Its that perfection that first attracted me — not the perfection itself but that someone could imagine such a type of structure. The control over it is merely a matter of conversation. This film has much of that vision of order: nested realities; art within art; selves within selves; symmetries of all sorts; honest giving of selves as a symmetry. It has visual expressions of this: from Caliban's Tempest cave through modern New York to Greenaway- like quantifications. Sea. Desert. But the order is broken, and I see that has put off viewers all over the world. This gives the impression that it is half-baked, that it is not finished. For instance, there's a mirroring of desert Indians and displaced Arabs that doesn't seem to work. There's a confluence of several types of violence that seems as if it could have been powerful but is not. There's a remarkable notion of painting, painting doors and painting with feces that could have become archetypal but fails. But each of these is a matter of disorder muting the effect and thereby making it all the more powerful. The personal story, if you do not know it, is that Medem's sister Ana was a painter. The paintings you see here by the character Ana are hers. She was killed at 22, just when this character is killed. There is a retroactive disorder that ripples back through time to perturb the movie that probably once was as perfect and powerful as "Sex and Lucia." Its that perturbation that is the art. If you open yourself as I have, this will matter. If not, well, someone died and it didn't matter. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

• Opening doors

  RResende2007-08-25

  This is really something. Any Medem film is a true event. Being able to watch such a master evolve, film by film is a privilege. Medem is on the top of cinematic innovation and exploration today, at this moment, and this film may be his highest achievement so far. So this one is built with oppositions, scale oppositions, characters temperament oppositions, landscape oppositions. Ana is, herself, "chaotic", she holds inside the quietness of anonymous lives, and the burden of women's heritage. The first scene, with the birds, apparently so detached from the rest, Ana and the dirty senator, Ana and Linda, her friend. (NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION) Medem's films have been always a reinvention of the love story, at once concerned about tenderness, human mind and visual cinematic storytelling innovation. The human soul is a huge iceberg from which we only see a short tip, and Medem's cinema always cared about the vast mass we don't see. This still matters here. But adding to that, there's a whole new dimension. This is a mark in Medem's career, and i would say in cinema, since he depicts new "scales" and new ambit to his cinema. He globalizes, and puts context into his once only dreamy, beautiful and tender world, that of "Lucia y el sexo" and "Los amantes..." One can't stop thinking about what this one shares with Babel, this is Medem's version of a contemporary global world. And he is so deep here. He freely works with time and space, in several dimensions. Let's check: . He works global space in being able to bring coherence to multiple stories, excerpts of lives, that pass all through Ana's mind (and Said, but Woman is the theme here). By global space i mean the world, let's call it realities, different countries and cultures no matter when we place it; . He works linear time, the one that carries Ana from the beginning to the end of her physical journey (also made by global spacial exploration). Here is Medem as we had seen him before in "Lucia...", dream like editions, always putting the audience looking for what happened; . The genius stroke: Medem adds historical time, working at once with various epochs, various "times", various contexts. Medem's own woman centered mythology finds in Ana the gate, or the passing point of every memory. This is the word, Medem brings memory to life. (CINEMATIC CONCERNS) All this would be just intellectually ambitious, but it is all put together in such a cinematic way that i do believe this film will prevail as a mark to a new approach. This is fresh and unseen before: . the cinematic devices: the edition, in the almost psychedelic moments in which all women from all times suffer at once, check the careful photography, always adequate to the situation but always coherent with the global work (duality once more). . the presence of "cinema" as a "mood" that en-forms all actions in the character (and mostly in the Camera) of Linda: she always films, Ana always watch the films (as well as a crowd), and many times those films (as well as some scenes) come worked out as the installations/performances of the students from the art school. And there's a particular moment in which this becomes clear as water and which is when we watch the heads of an audiences in a room wathching one of those films (this scene will only work in a theater, preferably with other people sitting in front of you). This will lead you to another dimension that may already not be cinema, but performative art, in which you are participating. Genius. . the unexpected use of animation, which intelligently starts "flat" and than becomes "deep", multidimensional, just like the whole construction as soon as Medem introduces his use of historical time. (THEMES) Ultimately, this is about paying attention to fundamental (though many times forgotten) issues: we came from somewhere, and that en-forms who we are today, forgetting that is rejecting Culture, capital C. Medem cares. "This column is doric, I am Greek", says Ana after being hit by a corrupt politician with a small doric column My evaluation: 5/5, this is a cinematic essay, on my list of most important. http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com