DIRTY LOVE – Patricio Valladares

Author: giulio.degaetano

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

A girl runs and stumbles along the boiling hot border of some highway, while a sunken-cheeked figure, wearing a texan hat, dragging a cow’s skull, chases after her at a slow but relentless pace. The sun high in the sky draws hektik shadows along the asphalt, the chaser hunts the prey, noses her out, catches up with her and rails against her…like an animal uttering a harsh and throaty laugh, his eyes covered with a fog of madness, like an alsatian dog snapping a rabbit’s throat…and the flow of blood finally tames his hunger.

It’s an interesting experiment this one brought forth by the Chilean director Patricio Valladares and by the italian scriptwriter Andrea Cavaletto, a movie made up of three segments connected one another by the killer. In a sort of metacinema Toro Loco meets the characters of the three different episodes and roughly kills them, giving birth to surreal dialogues full of social involments.

The first episode, EAT ME TENDER, is about a cannibal finding his prey who then turns out not to be a “prey”. The fundamental element of the episode is the presence of the two police inspectors who create comical sketches,  driving the irony (never fading in the movie) on full throttle from the very beginning of the story. Excellent construction and editing for the scenes in which we get a glimpse of the cannibal, wearing a mask, moving in the darkness in a sort of mute dance. In a way it recalled to my mind the Buffalo Bill character in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Unforgettable the ending scene showing the two of them eating one another while having sex, George Romero would no doubt enjoy it.

The second episode, NO ORDINARY LOVE, shows us a man who on a supposed business travel, actually meets a prostitute in a motel in order to start a sadistic and perverted game, to make up for a pleasure evidently left unsatisfied by his wife. In my opinion this is the weakest episode of the three, both as to directing and to scripting. First of all almost nothing happens and furthermore the aim to keep the comical register ends up with an excessive weakening of the emotional burden such a plot would require. Debaseing the character (and the locations), dirtening the photography and making everything unhealthy would’ve changed the feeling of this central episode. At last, the choice to use the CIG to show the inside of the man’s penis didn’t prove to be a winning one.

The third and last fragment, YOU LIKE THIS, outlines the life of a husband actually homosexual who silently undergoes his pushy wife’s harassment. He’s so subdued he decides to end the relationship with his lover, who is willing to do anything to keep him for himself. This is surely the most mature episode, the most dramatic and with the least frills of the triad.

This time the story gets decoloured by the drama of the poor homosexual being mistreated by his wife in any kind of situation, then finding himself to face an extreme act taken by his lover. Explicit, violent, depraved but also supported by a touch of irony which aligns it with the taste of the two previous episodes. Probably the most successful fragment.

It’s a pity we’ll hardly get to see in Italy such a worth work as DIRTY LOVE is, because of its explicit contents and the total lack of attention to noir and grotesque humour. Unfortunately we’re heires of the “cinepanettone” tradition, therefore what we import is almost only tacky cheap comedies (watch Van Wilder to get what I mean). The excellent work of Cavaletto and Valladares deserves visibility, given also the not hollywoodian means thay had to get by with.

Admirable is their choice to soak the entire movie with an ironical and grotesque  sublayer (as to this aspect the first episode is a leading example), but also the decision to end up with a punch in the stomach. Well…actually with a cow’s skull hit on the head.

The dvd will be released on the spanish market for Friki Films and purchaseable also on the internet with english and italian subtitles. Here follows the trailer.

Director: Patricio Valladares
Scriptwriter: Andrea Cavaletto
Cast: George Belmar, Adam Smith, Marcelo Valladares, Evelyn Belmar, Omar Campos, Eva Morgana