Set in the early 1980s in a remote mining town in Chile, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo follows Lidia (Tamara Cortés), an eleven-year-old girl growing up within a vibrant and fiercely protective commune of transvestites who are being shunned as a mysterious illness begins to spread transmitted through nothing more than a gaze, or so does the rumour go.
For his debut, director Diego Céspedes delivers a highly singular film, remarkably confident and ambitious, perfectly handling a shifting tone from the raucous, affectionate chaos of a close-knit queer commune to moments of lyrical intimacy, with a background of unseen menace and loss.
The myth of the disease being passed through a single loving gaze is both chilling and poetic, echoing the gay panic and misinformation of the early '80s AIDS epidemic and the film’s two most emotionally powerful scenes, both depicting the "transmission" of the illness, are striking in how differently they unfold. The first is a moment of dreamlike passion and connection. The second, in contrast reveals the cold, hard truth with brutal, clinical directness.
Through Lidia’s eyes, this is also a coming-of-age story, one that is tactfully handled as she is not presented as some kind of wisecrack kid too old for her age like it is too often the case with this genre but rather as a mostly passive spectator, not always grasping what is going on in the grownup world around her but absorbing a lot of it. Her brief but transformative time within this chosen family forces her to confront a world far more complex and painful than most children her age should have to face.
The warmth with which the film portrays its queer characters, never idealised, always human, as well as the miners forced to grappled with their own nature and desire, is one of its greatest strengths. It resists the trap of martyrdom or stereotype, presenting a group of individuals as messy, loving, scared, and deeply alive. The director also uses some Western elements to depict this frontier-like town with an ever so slightly stylised touch, there are indeed some echoes of Joan Crawford as Vienna in Johnny Guitar with Mama Boa (Paula Dinamarca in a wonderful performance), the older leader of the community in her strength and sense of survival.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is an ambitious and emotionally complex debut, a film that dares to experiment with form and genres while never losing sight of the people at its core. It is a quietly devastating reminder of how social stigmas can quickly spread from fear and how communities build hope from pain and mutual support.
Review by Laurent de Alberti
Star rating: ★★★★☆
Official selection, Un Certain Regard
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flaming. Directed by Diego Céspedes. Starring Paula Dinamarca, Tamara Cortés...
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