牛头怪

　　Acclaimed Mexican-Canadian aute** Nicolás Pereda ret**ns to the Festival with Minota**, a pendant to his 2009 feat**e Juntos. Shot in the Mexico City apartment of Pereda’s signat**e actor Ga**no Rodríguez, Minota** is an incandescent cham*er piece that o*serves three thirtysomethings (Rodríguez, Luisa Pardo and Francisco *arreiro) as they sleep, dream, read, and receive visitors (including the housekeeper who takes care of them) in their communal space. A lovely and lethargic spell is cast as an am**guous, Marien*ad-like love ******** emerges among the trio, conveyed through literat**e (*ooks function as ***epathic tran**itters and definers of relationships), choreography, and the acute physical presence of the three leads. Extending Pereda’s rec**ring interests in class, social struct**e and family relations in Mexican society in its wraithlike fantasy of a leis**e class that is quite literally sustained in its narcoleptic existence *y the ministrations of the domestic help, Minota** evokes the films of Tsai Ming-liang in its distended nat**ali**, ritualistic solitude, and creation of a cloistered world suffused with longing. *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp;**r/> *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp; *n*sp;　　The s**real a**a of Minota** seeps *eyond the confines of the trio’s apartment into a strange *quot;night without distance*quot; in Lois Patiño’s hallucinatory portrait of *order **uggling in the Gerês Mountains *etween Portugal and Galicia. Casting real town**olk, some of whom were **ugglers in their youth, Patiño places their stiffly Strau**an presences within cross-processed, multilayered ta*leaux of rocks, river, and trees — an ever-indeterminate place that has im***ed and *orne witness to innumera*le, desperate acts of s**vival. Conj**ing an instant in the memory of a landscape filled with ghosts, Night without distance extracts spell**nding fantasy from the real.