No future / No hope / No narrative? Víctor Gaviria y sus películas Rodrigo D: No futuro, La vendedora de rosas y Sumas y restas

Roberto Ponce Cordero

doi:10.15366/secuencias2018.48.005

Abstract

Starting with his directorial debut, Rodrigo D: No futuro (1990), until his magnus opus, Sumas y restas (2005) –on the social phenomenon of narcotraffic in Medellin–, passing through what is arguably his best-known feature film, La vendedora de rosas (1998), the films of the Colombian director Victor Gaviria put the distinction between the realms of reality and fiction in crisis, as well as the distinction between representation and what is represented. In this sense, Gaviria’s work challenges the whole notion of representation itself. In this article, I argue that this is due to the fact that Gaviria’s artistic project involves a permanent reflection on how to represent a reality that is, in the end, impossible to represent, such as the case of the violent reality of Medellin’s slums. Reading the three aforementioned films in reverse, starting with the most recent one and ending with the one that launched the director’s cinematic career, I suggest that the real contribution of Gaviria to film history is that, in order to consider the living experiences of those living in extreme marginality, at the periphery of the periphery, he reccurs to a model that is not based on representation but on auto-representation. This model has almost no narrative content, but it is highly affective, including the most wretched subjects of Medellin at the end of the 20th Century, those subjects who lack future, hope, and even narratives.

Highlights

Starting with his directorial debut, Rodrigo D: No futuro (1990), until his magnus opus, Sumas y restas (2005) –on the social phenomenon of narcotraffic in Medellín, passing through what is arguably his best-known feature film, La vendedora de rosas (1998), the films of the Colombian director Víctor Gaviria put the distinction between the realms of reality and fiction in crisis, as well as the distinction between representation and what is represented
Aunque estos factores tienen su peso, el distanciamiento que causa el lenguaje de los personajes de Rodrigo D: No futuro se debe, más que nada, a la radical superficialidad de dicho lenguaje en sí, en el sentido de que es puramente descriptivo, que no apunta a referentes profundos de ninguna clase y que, como le corresponde a una buena expresión de una condición generalizada de vida nuda, no tiene pretensiones de establecer narrativas ni, en la mayor parte del filme, de invocar al pasado anhelado pero en definitiva inexistente, así como tampoco pretende las de sentar las bases de un futuro que, por otro lado, es igualmente imposible
Finalmente, en su penúltima producción fílmica hasta el momento, Gaviria es fiel a su técnica de usar actores naturales y a su compromiso con encontrar el habla desde lo marginal, pero empaca ambas tendencias en el contexto de una epopeya convencional de ascenso y caída de un antihéroe, como es el caso de Sumas y restas, película cuya moraleja, en caso de haberla, sería que el pecado, o la condena, del observador externo consiste justamente en abandonar su distancia o en dejar de ser externo, si se quiere, así como en meterse demasiado en ese otro mundo que no le corresponde dado que es, precisamente, otro

Summary

Introduction

Starting with his directorial debut, Rodrigo D: No futuro (1990), until his magnus opus, Sumas y restas (2005) –on the social phenomenon of narcotraffic in Medellín–, passing through what is arguably his best-known feature film, La vendedora de rosas (1998), the films of the Colombian director Víctor Gaviria put the distinction between the realms of reality and fiction in crisis, as well as the distinction between representation and what is represented.

Results

Conclusion