Berlín 2010: Elogios para Por tu culpa, de Anahí Berneri

El crítico Lee Marshall, de la revista Screen International, asegura que es la confirmación definitiva de lo que la directora argentina ya prometía en Un año sin amor y Encarnación. Además, indica que la actuación de Erica Rivas en el film es "extraordinaria". Con igual entusiasmo la recibió Variety.

A continuación el texto original de la crítica de Screen (en inglés):

"Confirming the promise she showed in her first two features A Year Without Love (2005) and Encarnacion (2007), Argentine director Anahi Berneri returns with a compelling and thought-provoking domestic drama. Shot almost in real time in a tense, handheld style, this account of a tough night for a mother with small children resonates far beyond the confines of the story. It also features an outstanding, raw performance from young actress Erica Rivas.

Encarnacion was a loosely-structured portrait of a woman going through an identity crisis. It’s Your Fault shares some of the same themes of how women see themselves and how much this depends on how they are viewed, and judged, by others.

But here, for all the long takes and unorthodox story structure, a real drama emerges – one that has the tension of an audience-teasing thriller. This should help ease It’s Your Fault towards arthouse distribution outside Argentina.

Julieta (Rivas) is stuck at home with her two young sons, little Teo and his bolshy older brother Valen. It’s past the kids’ bedtime – but frazzled Julieta would rather park them in front of the apartment’s two TVs than fight to get them into bed, as she has work to finish.

The edgy shooting style, with the camera close in on Julieta, and a sound design that stresses her subjective point of view (which extends at times to the kind of selective deafness with which most parents will be familiar) keeps the audience a little on edge, waiting perhaps for a crisis to emerge.

Eventually, something really does happen: in a fight with his brother – or perhaps because of his mother’s clumsiness – Teo falls over and hits his head on the floor. Julieta does what any good parent would do: she takes him into hospital for a check-up, dragging Valen along too because there’s no-one else she can leave him with.

Here a conscientious young pediatrician, alerted by Teo’s fractured arm and Julieta’s confused answers to his questions, suggests that the three of them should stay the rest of the night in the hospital so the child can be kept under observation. As it gradually dawns on the shocked Julieta that she is suspected of maltreating her child, it also dawns on the audience that all may not be as they originally perceived: Teo’s accident may have happened a little too quickly to see properly whether she pushed him or not; she was at the end of her tether; and she does seem quite young be a mother (as her husband wastes no time telling her when he finally arrives)…

But it’s exactly this climate of suspicion and the assumptions we make about people that Berneri’s intriguing, sensitive film is about. There’s a telling scene that illustrates the director’s perceptiveness – when Julieta’s nose starts to bleed in the hospital and a couple of drops fall onto her t-shirt, she washes it off obsessively in the bathroom, as if this too might incriminate her. The film also nails the consumer culture that so many kids live in – in which the answer to most problems is a favourite DVD, a gameboy or a new toy gun."

CRITICA PUBLICADA EN VARIETY

Por Boyd Van Hoeij

"An emergency night-time visit to the hospital to patch up two rowdy kid brothers suddenly calls the parental aptitude of their mother into question in the high-strung Argentinean drama "It's Your Fault." Minimalist third feature of director Anahi Berneri ("A Year Without Love") is helmed with acuity and features a high-wire, arguably career-best performance by thesp Erica Rivas. But its austere look, endless whining and crying of the kids on the soundtrack and relentlessly bleak tone mean this hard-to-sell arthouse item will need all the critical support it can get.

First 30 minutes, shown almost in real time, are a verite-style entry into the life of young mother Julieta (Rivas), who tries to finish a report at home late at night. Her offspring, eight-year-old Valentin (Nicasio Galan) and his younger brother, Teo (Zenon Galan), are not yet in bed, and do everything they can in their power to make Julieta's task impossible. The kids' relentless noise, movements and their constant demands for attention are as tiring for Julia as they are for the audience, with ace d.p. Willi Behnisch's cramped shots heightening the general feel of claustrophobia.

When young Teo falls from the bed during a fight with Valentin, Julieta worries he might have seriously hurt himself, and she takes him and his brother to the nearest hospital. Her hubby, Guillermo (Ruben Viani), is on his way back from a business trip and only arrives later.

The scenes at the clinic, with its empty night-time corridors and unnatural calm, feel like a relief from the audiovisual assault of the scenes at home, but the slower editing rhythms and wider shots soon prove deceptive. The pediatrician on duty (Omar Nunez) identifies a number of bruises and cuts on both kids, and after a contradictory explanation of what happened, suspicion falls on Julieta, who makes a confused impression and wants to leave the hospital as soon as possible.

Auds looking to play the blame game will feel frustrated by this pic, in which Berneri explores questions of parental responsibility, contempo child-rearing and family dynamics that have no real answers. Carefully controlled perf by Rivas is both instantly readable and absolutely impenetrable, making it clear Julieta has issues but never quite letting on to what extent she may (or may not) be or have been a bad mother.

Like in Berneri previous films, "A Year Without Love" and "Encarnacion," there's a sense in "It's Your Fault" that the protag is straitjacketed by the expectations of those around her and that the role he or she is assigned by others might not necessarily fit with who they really are. Though Julieta clearly loves her children, it is not a given that she is a natural mother, or that that could be the only thing that she is.

Filmed with a RedOne camera in clean, carefully composed shots and with exemplary use of sound, pic further confirms Berneri as a talent to watch.