Brian Mendonça
‘From’ is a word that is part of a sentence which
suggests a relationship between two things, viz. I took the milk from the
fridge. So when the name of a film is John
From you begin to wonder. The title of the film also does not give away
which language it is in.
The character John From does not exist in the film
as a living person. He traces his
provenance from a time when American airplanes dropped food packets over
Melanesia in the Pacific ocean. When the natives asked who was the god from the
sky, they were told ‘John from America.’ ‘America’ seemed to have got lost in
translation and the saviour was simply christened ‘John From.’
The movie is about Rita, a bored teenage girl who
is infatuated with a photographer, twice her age, who moves in to an apartment
in the same complex where she lives. Rita’s parents don’t seem to have the time
for her or her adolescent whims. As Rita
falls head over heels for him, she begins to be interested in the subject of
his exhibition, viz. the peoples of Melanesia. She is enamoured by the exhibits
– some bizarre and fearful – of skulls,
canoes, head gear and photos.
Uncanny circumstances bring them together, as
though the spirits from the island have come to bring the two together.
Suddenly the window bangs, announcing that her love-interest has returned from
work. An eerie all-enveloping mist pervades the place as though a presence is
at work.
With a little help from her friends, Rita steals
his car. When she grandly returns it to him, he feels indebted to her and love
blossoms.
The movie, though slow on the uptake, grows on
you. The gradual immersion of a Portuguese girl into an otherwise alien
culture, is gradually and convincingly done. The high point is when Rita paints
her face and neck in the manner of the natives of Melanesia.
In the early part of the movie the girl and her
confidante Sara listen to Western music with beat, swaying their bodies to the
rhythm. But as mysterious things begin to happen, the background score is
replaced by women’s voices from Melanesia.
The pristine beauty of the sandy beaches of
Melanesia is contrasted with the block cubical apartments of Lisbon or ‘the
monotonous microcosm of concrete’ as Alfonso Rivera, reviewer on cineuropa.org,
puts it.
The fascination of a young girl for an older man
is a challenging theme. Lolita, the classic novel by Vladimir
Nabokov comes to mind, so also the film American
Beauty starring Kevin Spacey.
Youth is seen as rejuvenating and the elixir of life – or what’s left of it.
How will it end? the viewer wonders. The
astounding conclusion is thought-provoking and beautiful.
John
From
(2015), the Portuguese film, directed by João Nicolau starring Julia Palha and
Filipe Vargas was screened recently for the Semana
da Cultura, Indo-Portuguesa, Goa as
part of the IXth Lusophone Film Festival at the Maquinez Palace,
Panjim.
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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on Sunday, 8 October 2017. Pix courtesy, imdb.
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