Camino de campaña (en)

La carrera del animal / Animal's run

Selection: 

Director: 

Nicolas Grosso

Country: 

  • Argentina

Format: 

Feature film

Type: 

Fiction

Film exhibited in Toulouse: 

LA CARRERA DEL ANIMAL

NUEVOS HORIZONTES + UN AUTRE VISAGE DU CINÉMA ARGENTIN
MEJOR PELÍCULA ARGENTINA – BAFICI 2011
SANFIC 2011
 

Script writer(s): 

Nicolas Grosso

Synopsis: 

Agustín comes back to the hills and waits for the beginning of the judgment where he is accused of killing his parents. She stays at Matias’, a farmer who worked for the family and knows him since he was a kid. Agustín gets involved again with the locals: from childhood friends to people related with the investigation. The pass of time and his unavoidable link with death stains every rapprochement to any person in village. Also Matías decided to take some distance, not trusting him because of the murmurs his presence sparks off. Some anonymous threats fell over Agustín’s back alter heating a policeman when he visited the crime scene –his childhood home-.
At the same time, Leila arrives to the hills on a storage truck. Her cell phone rings over and over but she doesn’t seem to notice it. The first night, she stays at some stranger’s house where she steals some clothing. The next day, she calls Adriana, her father’s ex wife, who lives on her own because of her recent divorce. Once again she escapes and manages spending some hours with a monastic community, from where she is expelled for hurting a nun. Leila doesn’t seem to feel comfortable nowhere. She neither seems to know what’s the path she has to take. She battles with headaches and doesn’t contemplate her family or her past. In the meanwhile, at the city, they seek for her.
Agustín meets Leila by chance a spend two days together before the judgment. They visit places from his past, including his parents’ house where the crime is being reconstructed. She seems calm with him; anyway her mood is always unpredictable. The both appear on TV and newspapers: Leila because of her disappearance and Agustín because of his criminal situation. They seek together for a place where to sleep, they have sex and they rest from the others. Once again they go back to Matías’ house where they face the violence. Agustín kills an intruder because of what he supposed an abuse situation to Leila. The circumstances are moving for the two of them. The next morning, Agustín attends to his first day at Court. Leila steels some Money and takes a bus to a new uncertain destination.
 

Visual concept: 

Storytelling in 'CAMPAIGN TRAIL' is basically shaped by its point of view choices. Agustin's arrival to his childhood's town after several years, and its link with a crime from the past, make his relationships with other characters strongly determined by suspicion and mistrust. Leila's case is similar, but in an inverse sense. The girl gets to the town without any knowledge about it. This way she denies any connections with her past, keeping her feelings to herself only. From half of the film on, Leila and Agustin are together, live and feel together so that perception appears to be shared and mixed up. Locations portrait should be significant to influence on characters actions and reactions; not only a known place or a new one, is the whole possibility of them interacting with each other. Taking the right distance is vital for the film, and should be chosen carefully, not too close, taking in count violence, affection and other strong emotions that characters carry on with them. There lies the truth of this story, finding a conservative narrative line so it doesn't fall in showing unnecessary pain and pathos.