Tierra (8/10)
Tierra was Julio Medem's next film after The Red Squirrel, and shows the emergence of a real talent. While the Red Squirrel might be still seen as an apprentice piece, Tierra is the work of a film-maker ready to take the world stage.
The film tells the story of Angel (Carmelo Gomez) who is a fumigator, visiting a wine-growing area to eradicate the woodlice that infest the soil. Paradoxically, the locals seem to like the distinctive flavour which the woodlice give to the wine, yet they consider the insects to be pests and the town approves Angel's plans to fumigate the vineyards. He stays and soon inspires passion and conflict.
Tierra is Spanish for "earth", and just as in English, can refer either to the planet or to the soil. Beautifully photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe, Tierra addresses both meanings, presenting the landscape in glowing browns and oranges and taking the viewer down into the soil to burrow with the woodlice. The alien nature of our home planet is made all the more explicit in the fumigating sequences in which Angel and his hire hands progress over the bare landscape wearing white protective suits like astronauts exploring a bleak unfamiliar world.
Angel himself is an enigmatic stranger, talking about himself and to himself as if he is not completely connected to this world. He considers himself to be only half-alive, partly inhabiting some other place, and he is accompanied by the angel of his half-dead self. Whether this has any reality other than in Angel's head, we are never sure.
Writer-director Medem relishes the disconnectedness he creates - within people, between people, and between people and the world around them. Reminiscent of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Tierra is magical, strange and a delight on the eye.
--
Gary Jones
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