Salamander 火蜥蜴

Just released from prison, Alba (Dolores Fonzi) never met Inti, her six-year-old son. After she took him away from her former old and loving custodian, she undertakes a hike into the valley of El Boston in Patagonia.

They settle in a filthy and overcrowded house in which hippies and renegades estranged from society share nothing but mostly their interest for hallucinogenic mushrooms, in an atmosphere far from being harmonious. While Alba vainly pursues her idealistic dreams, Inti observes this puzzling environment with the innocence of a child, and hangs on to a survival guide in order to understand this anarchical and crumbling world.

In his first movie, titled "Salamandra" (salamander), Pablo Agüero creates a claustrophobic setting, in which natural elements oppress the main characters, giving a sense of endless despair. The inhospitality of El Boston ("non nuclear zone") contrasts with the highly idealized description of Alba, and informs us of this character's personality.

Despite her literate monologues and naïve outlook on life, she never loses her sense of reality, and her determination to build a new and happy life for his son give her an engaging side.

What is most striking, however, is the director's ability to make us see through the eyes of Inti. There is a shocking contrast between the film's first scene, where the child plays with plastic toys in a colorful bathroom, and when he later huddles up in a white and empty bathtub. His innocence gives way to an urgent need of survival. While he played with a fake gun in his previous home, Inti ends up stealing a real knife to protect himself from abandoned and violent children bullying him. The high point of intensity is reached when Inti yells "I am full of hatred" and throws a kitten he adopted onto the floor, and destroys the furniture of a wooden house Alba rented from a peasant.

Without effusion of blood, the director manages to draw a fearful portrait of a generation that fends for itself, and where the apparently educated and well thinking beings surrounding the mother and the child sometimes reveal hidden faces. The movie works on the illusion of a happy ending, which is always ruined by an extern element.

Another main theme is the difficulty of communication between two strangers sharing the same blood. Alba struggles to fulfill her role as a mother, treating Inti indifferently as a child or as a confident. The audience is left with the impression of an unachieved and untidy plot, and with a vivid feeling of hopelessness for the future of the two characters. Without doubt, "Salamandra" is a very sad and sharp movie, which analyses the feelings and personalities of a 30-year-old woman and a young child with the same accuracy.

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