Foreign Intimacies and Political Pasts in Paula Markovitch’s El actor principal (2019)

Abstract

This article studies the intersection of the protagonists’ basic emotions, bold gestures, and defiantly occupied places in Paula Markovitch’s El actor principal (2019) , which, in turn, reveals the tensions between their precarious livelihoods and subtle forms of agency. Markovitch’s fourth film focuses on a chance encounter in Berlin between a Mexican non-professional actor and former petty criminal, Luis, and a laundry room worker and Kosovo war survivor, Azra. Unable to communicate in the languages they speak (Spanish for Luis and Albanian for Azra), they begin to generate a unique intersubjectivity where contradictions make sense. Such communicative efforts, failures, and breakthroughs between the main characters paradoxically succeed in illuminating the deepest quandaries of their broken selves, emotional states, and political struggles of the past. As the protagonists’ exchange about personal past and present encumbrances grows increasingly dependent upon their gestures, their emotional bonding intensifies as well. Such a bonding ultimately sheds light on Markovitch’s complex aesthetic explorations of social marginality and resistance.