PIFF 2010: Installment III
17 February
Gigante
dir. Adrián Biniez
Uruguay
Gigante will not be to everyone’s taste. Nothing much happens. If that’s a deal breaker, you should probably steer clear of this one. I rather liked it myself.
Jara is a night-shift security guard at a supermarket. A big, quiet, gentle man, he wears t-shirts with the logos of heavy-metal bands, plays video games with his nephew, watches TV, lifts weights, and moonlights as security at a night club. At the supermarket Jara sits in a control room watching the security monitors while the night shift workers clean the store and ready it for the next day’s business. He passes the time working crossword puzzles and looks the other way when cleaning women pilfer inexpensive items such as rice, pasta, and yogurt.
One night he sees a cleaning woman, moving backward as she mops, crash into a huge display of paper towels she did not realize was behind her. An officious night manager witnesses her hapless attempt to reassemble the display and berates her for her carelessness, telling her she will be fired if it happens again.
The next morning, while waiting for the bus, Jara notices the woman walk past to catch her bus. After that, captivated for no particular reason, he looks for her on the security monitors and begins to follow as she walks through the city after leaving work in the morning.
Her name is Julia, and she is from the country. She practices karate and lives in a house, perhaps renting a room, where an older man also lives. She uses the computer at an Internet cafe and has a date with a man she met on an Internet dating site.
Jara is too shy to approach Julia. The most he can do is buy a small plant that he leaves on the floor in an aisle she will be mopping with a note card on which he has written only her name, nothing more.
While he is quiet and gentle, friendly with his coworkers but keeping much to himself, Jara is no pushover. In one scene he follows the Internet date. Walking about a block behind in a part of town where the streets are empty, he sees the man accosted by three street toughs demanding money. The man has no clue what to do. The toughs only become more aggressive when he tells them he has no money and begs them to take his cell phone. Jara starts to walk away, but no, he cannot do that. Without a word he floors the three toughs with a single punch each. He and the man he rescued go to a little cafe, where they chat and he asks about the date, hoping to learn a little bit about Julia. He learns she likes heavy metal music.
In another scene he follows Julia. It is early evening. A cab driver parked by the curb, thinking perhaps to impress her with his wit, calls out, “With an ass like that you don’t need a pussy.” She ignores him. The camera follows her as she walks away. Then a horn blows repeatedly, and the camera cuts back to the cab where Jara stands with his arm through the window, calmly banging the driver’s head against the steering wheel before walking away without a word.
I trust these details give a sense of the character and the film’s feel without giving away too much. Of the ending, I will say only it is pretty much just right, an offering of possibility that promises neither too much nor too little.
Horacio Camandule is little short of astounding as Jara, who emerges as a singular, flesh and blood individual, no particularly quirky or idiosyncratic traits, no fatal flaw, not intellectual or much given to reflection, just a decent fellow. I could see myself fortunate to count him as a friend, someone to meet for a beer or hang out with in the park for part of an afternoon, though he would not share my interest in Beckett and Keats, nor I his taste for heavy metal. He is a decent fellow. There should always be a place in our lives for such people and for wonderful little films like Gigante.