Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Carolina Sanin, Leticia Gomez, Antonio Martinez
Intro:
…naturalistic exploration of loyalty, deep respect and love for family.
Colombian writer-director Franco Lolli follows his award-winning festival favourite 2014 debut feature Gente de bien with Litigante, selected to open Cannes Critic’s Week 2019.
Set in Bogota, it follows Silvia Gomez (Carolina Sanin), juggling the increasing demands of her career as a public sector lawyer, single mother and carer for her curmudgeonly, terminally ill mother Leticia (Leticia Gomez). Mother and daughter both chose careers as lawyers, adding poignant weight to the film’s title, as Sylvia faces off against Leticia in an attempt to convince her not to give up life-lengthening cancer treatment, while battling a burgeoning municipal corruption scandal embroiling her workplace.
Leticia’s not afraid to die, proven as she lights another gasper early in the film when leaving hospital treatment for lung cancer. She just doesn’t want the helpless feeling accompanying another round of chemo. Sylvia feels that it’s her duty to convince her otherwise, causing ongoing tension between the two.
Central to the mother-daughter dynamic is the love they feel for Sylvia’s only son Antonio (Antonio Martinez), going through his own challenges at school where he’s bullied for supposedly not having a father.
Leticia’s opinion about her daughter’s life choices is an ongoing source of antagonism between the two when Sylvia begins dating hard-hitting journalist Abel Morales (Vladimir Duran), who interviews her on his radio show about the corruption scandal. Leticia is horrified, exclaiming ‘he humiliated you in front of all Colombia’ and attempts to sabotage their relationship.
Lolli’s observations of family life are unobtrusive and personal. Leticia is expertly played by his real-life mother, also battling cancer, and the brilliant Sanin as Sylvia is a prominent Colombian writer and academic who is Lolli’s cousin.
The casting of these family member non-actors leads to very naturalistic, convincing interactions, a skill that many ‘real’ actors practice years to achieve.
At the heart of Lolli’s film, co-written with Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay, is loyalty, deep respect and love for family, something that Sylvia returns to as she juggles her increasingly challenging existence with a looming court case and dying mother. While the film’s ending provides a certain amount of closure, it feels abrupt, leaving questions unanswered.
Essentially, Litigante is a festival film and may not appeal to an audience used to a more standard Hollywood style story arc, but for many this will be the perfect reason to see it.
