Hernandez Converses With Images in `Rain’

This is really a beautiful film, and it was a great pleasure speaking with the director!

Director Paula Hernandez /Korea Times Photo by Lee Hyo-won

JEONJU - If a picture paints a thousand words, then Paula Hernandez’s ``moving images’’ depict an infinite stream of (un)consciousness. The Argentine director has brought her second feature film ``Rain’’ to South Korea to vie in the International Competition section of the 10th Jeonju International Film Festival, which comes to a close today in North Jeolla Province.

``It’s absolutely different and interesting,’’ Hernandez said about her first visit to Asia in an interview with The Korea Times Tuesday in Jeonju. ``I took a lot of photos of women in the market. You never see anything like that in Argentina, it’s so fascinating,’’ she said, showing images of middle-aged ``ajumma’’ gathered around, making food, in the local open air market.

The 40-year-old is always shooting her camera lens everywhere, and took many to write the script for ``Rain.’’ ``It was a conversation with words and images. Rain makes everything blurry and foggy. The rain in the movie is not melancholic rain but something that makes you feel stuck,’’ she said.

``Rain’’ features, most appropriately, endless streams of rain. In wintry Buenos Aires, a woman is stuck in wet weather and traffic. Suddenly, Roberto darts into her car. A mugger? Almar hesitates, but extends her hospitality to this confused-looking man who, dressed in fine clothing, has imported cigarettes, a silk handkerchief and a bleeding hand.

Roberto, who is from Madrid, may be feeling lost in the foreign apartment building of his late father, whom he never met, but Almar is the ``homeless’’ one who has left her husband and is living in her car, which is equipped with everything from a percolator to flower pot. The two strangers -- a man who doesn’t know where he is coming from and a woman who doesn’t know where she is going -- keep running in to each other in the following few days. The intervention of chance results in confusion, and, ultimately, clarity, when the rain stops and the traffic starts moving again.

The award-winning director of ``Herencia’’ (2001) presents a story akin to ``Once’’ (2006), where two lost souls share a small but intimate encounter, which may even be love, but one that is consummated in being unconsummated. But unlike the musical Irish movie, ``Rain’’ keeps everything minimal, from the score and palette to the characters and objects captured in the frame.

``Less is more,’’ said the director. ``Rain itself is a melody, along with the noises of cars and traffic jams.’’ Nevertheless, things utterly quotidian -- a traffic jam, greasy diner, deserted parking lot -- take on a striking elegance, and the things unsaid -- a transient smile, results of a pregnancy test never shown -- speak loudly.

Almar, who leaves her husband of nine years in the movie, perhaps reflects the director’s own divorce from a 10-year marriage. ``Filmmaking is not a profession, it’s what you are,’’ she said. ``It puts all my interests -- writing, reading, people stories and real things, images, and music -- all together with my sensibilities.’’

Born in 1969, Hernandez entered the film industry at the age of 18 as a production designer assistant. One thing led to the next and she studied at Agustin Alezzo’s drama workshop and Universidad del Cine (National Film University). She has directed commercials, short films, documentaries and advertisements.

Does being female matter in the Argentine film industry? ``It used to, in the generation before mine. Actually, even for my first film (in 2001), people asked me about being a woman director. I can’t say it was more difficult or easier. But today, there are many, many female students studying film,’’ she said, suggesting that gender is becoming less of an issue.

More problematic, however, is the financial crisis back home that is affecting filmmaking in general. ``You eventually find a way to fund a movie, but the problem occurs afterward with distribution,’’ she said. But Hernandez marches on with her passion.

Her next project will be a film adaptation of the novel ``Un Amor para toda la vida’’ by Sergio Bizzio, who inspired the Cannes award-winning film ``XXY’’ (2007). ``Filmmaking is slow in Argentina,’’ she said, and during the prolonged preparation for the movie, she plans to shoot a funky character-based documentary. ``It’s important to keep yourself busy rather than wait listlessly,’’ she said, smiling.

110 minutes. Distributed by Argentina Video Home, Buena Vista International. In Spanish.