La desconocida (EN)

La desconocida

Selection: 

Director: 

Natalia Smirnoff

Country: 

  • Argentina

Format: 

Feature film

Type: 

Fiction

Synopsis: 

Clara (39) is a well-known illustrator that less than a year ago won a very important prize that changed her economic status and found herself on the public eye, so she moved with her family to a suburb to be more focused on her work. Her husband, Francisco, is her pleader and defender, sometimes over-protective. Also Sammie, her agent. Between both of them, kind of handle Clara´s life. Among this adaptation and discovery, she goes to the town to buy something, and finds Ariel, the butcher, her old boyfriend, with whom 20 years ago, dreamed of living in that place. The impact is mutual. Ariel doesn’t know anything about the public life of Clara and she enjoys this on top of everything. They start a series of random encounters, continued by some programmed ones, doing things that they used to do and are no longer part of her current life. Ariel lives one day at a time, without thinking or expecting too much. Something that contrasts a lot with Clara’s family and working life, full of important and exposed events, as well as tidy up and tight orders. Clara goes into crisis with what she has to draw next, finding herself in an unknown place, where she finds out from Ariel who she was and who is she now. What changed, what is her essence, what she lost? Who she wants to be from now?

Visual concept: 

Starting the play about a leading female character, an illustrator, I’m interested in exploring the gaze of somebody who draws, who imagines, and the interplay between the movie image’s internal reality and its possible proximity to her imagination. Since everything happens against a placid suburb resembling a village, there is a chance for beauty, a green landscape with fruit tress as contrast, of natural color spots that may be close to or a counterpoint to the drawings. The village where she meets her former boyfriend has to be something stopped in time; this can make more sense with the feelings she is reliving and a contrast to her house, more refined in terms of aesthetic beauty.