LIVERPOOL (ARGENTINA/2008/LISANDRO ALONSO)

After a hefty season working at sea, Farrel takes his shore leave as an opportunity to revisit some home truths, travelling to Tierra del Fuego to meet his mother, with whom he has grown literally and figuratively distant. Once on land, Farrel traipses from bar to bar, his original mission apparently forgotten. The next morning brings with it a sense of purpose, and Farrel braves the snow and ice to travel to a community in the mountains where he finds his mother living with a man and a young girl. The relationships between the group are never expressly stated, and Farrel punctuates his sojourn with swigs of vodka to make the experience bearable.

Liverpool is an unusual project, eliciting an emotional response by deliberately not showing much emotion on screen. As with all of Lisandro Alonso’s films, the drama is implicit, and very little dialogue is used to convey Farrel’s story. It is only his dominant presence on screen that allows the viewer to begin to feel for him in his isolation. The title Liverpool, seen briefly on a keyring, is little more than a placeholder for emotion in the film, but is apt for Alonso’s intentions. Farrel never comfortably fits into the family ambience of his mother’s home – given the unpredictable nature of his life at sea, his visit feels merely like one stop of many. Alonso, as usual, does a wonderful job of carrying the narrative in the photography, but some viewers might need a lot of convincing.

FANTASMA (ARGENTINA/2006/LISANDRO ALONSO)

A middle-aged man looks longingly through a window, a stiletto in his hand. A black screen, accompanied by soaring post-rock guitars, occupies the screen for the next minute, before returning us to the man, who is now pottering around an empty events venue. It is this tantalisingly languid style which Lisandro Alonso uses in his short feature Fantasma. Words are scarcely uttered, if ever – the narrative comprises unnerving silences and pregnant pauses, told in rigid shots which invite the audience to take in the dimensions of each scene. The man eventually meets a young female student at the cinema, where the two are the only attendees to a screening which seems to show the man as some sort of explorer.

Naturally, a patience for long takes is crucial to get through Fantasma, but even then there is no solid guarantee of enjoyment. Like Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn and Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin, Alonso gives us a literal cinematic experience, transforming the darkened screening room into a stage wherein performance is unadulterated by dialogue. The scenes surrounding this nucleus of reflection offer a slight narrative more led by possibility than certainty, and while the man is an interesting sight, his slick black hair belying his true age, his story just doesn’t feel interesting enough to pursue. The introduction of the student promises a connection between the two characters, but teasingly doesn’t deliver. It isn’t that Fantasma has little to say, rather that it is perhaps too subtle for its own good.