中世纪 (2022)

Films about confinement during the pandemic may have gone viral, but La edad media is a species of a whole other kind. Lucid and ludic, terribly funny but also deeply serious at the same time, this film co-directed by dancer and choreographer Luciana Acuña and filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky has a wise, privileged narrator: their ten-year-old daughter Cleo. Through her eyes, the film deals with far more issues than mere Covid routines, such as online lessons and virtual shopping, the latter of which turns awfully weird here. Rampant inflation, cultural policy and market value are on the menu of La edad media, which expands upon the question raised by Moguillansky in his previous film Por el dinero (2019): is it possible for artists to pay the bills with their work? And if so, at what cost? The cinematic use of the restricted space of the family home is masterful in all its possibilities, which Acuña and Moguillansky embrace with a crazy, slapstick spirit augmented with Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd. And a special mention goes to Juana, the family dog: Aki Kaurismäki would surely love to cast her in his next film.