NYFF '24: "Lázaro at Night" asks what you really want

by Cláudio Alves

Treading the line between documentary and fiction filmmaking, Nicolás Pereda continues his collaboration with the Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol theater collective in his latest film. Lázaro at Night can, at times, feel like an acting exercise spinning out of control yet perpetually low-key, a sort of screwball comedy on a morphine drip. It's the story of three friends in their forties, living in Mexico City, where they pursue work as actors and fall into a peculiar love triangle. In this, Lázaro G. Rodríguez, Luisa Pardo, and Francisco Barreiro are basically playing themselves. Or, at the very least, a fictionalized version of their identities, twisted for the pleasure of Pereda and a film that confounds aplenty but is also captivating in its own odd way…

Once upon a time, Lázaro, Luisa and Francisco were aspiring writers who met at a workshop. It was early in their careers. So much so that, since then, they've abandoned their scribing path altogether. Instead, the three have put their hopes in performance, trying to find acting gigs while seeping into their personal sense of creative and professional stagnation. Mayhap because of shared disappointments, their bond has grown over time, ingrained itself into their very sense of self. In other words, the trio is codependent as hell, and it's not as if they're unaware. On the other hand, there's comfort in the dynamic, so why shake things up? 

Logically, the inciting incident of Lázaro at Night is the decision to do just that. After years in a happy relationship with Lázaro, Luisa has decided to come clean about her affair with Francisco. The timing couldn't be worse since, while these seedlings of melodrama take root, all three of them are auditioning to take part in the same independent film. Not that there's any casting involved. The project's excentric director is very clear about that, preferring to peruse and pursue something closer to the "truth" in the potential performer. Gestures and a simple state of being, how they drink water and react to his monologuing on it are the point. If there's a point to any of it.

If nothing else, the repeated scenes give the film a necessary rhythm, like the swings of a metronome. They also redirect the audience's attention away from what's being said to the realm of behavioral cues. Going further still, Pereda is inviting a reflection on how his public may react to the characters, an inward inquiry into why certain things cause discomfort and whatnot. Such a logic certainly reframes a series of awkward moments, including a symphonic concert watched from cloistering shadow by the disinterested trio. It's mortifying to watch, and not just because of the screeching music. Instead, the interactions define a symphony of cringe, with Pereda as the mad maestro.

Consider how the director can present a conversation that's both mundane and fantastical. We hear their voices over the image, yet their mouths are closed. The couple is still stuck in the spectator space of the concert, so they don't actually speak. It's only looks. Regardless, there's no sense of a realist truth beneath the artifice, as if the telepathy were some allegory for an alternative conversation we're not seeing. This impossible dialogue is the point and the only reality that matters, even if it can't exist within our notion of the real. The director works for authenticity supreme and something that goes farther than mimesis or documentation – hyperreal cinema.

While the concert scene is emblematic of the playfulness at hand and the step beyond real, other passages deserve reflection, especially as they unravel the romantic triangle. When you expect drama to erupt, it's just a resigned sigh and the mulish expression of an angry boy on a grown man's face. And, though she's the center of the storm and its cause, Julia just wants to brush it off and move on. The human story is played in believable terms, a naturalistic edge, but the presentation is anesthetized to a hilarious degree. It's so self-aware it's watching itself from the outside in. A bit like the audience questioning their reaction to the film, its cringe, its desiring images. 

It's all about these self-reflections, dragging the characters along until they are openly questioning who they are and what they really want. These factors lead the film to an outright collapse, folding past and present until today and yesterday exist on the same plane, sight and sounds bleeding into each other and contracting signifiers, erasing lucidity. Such experiments are hard to sustain, especially when a filmmaker like Pereda holds on to the flimsiest facsimile of a narrative. In some ways, going full experimental might have been less perplexing. Then again, it might have also been less enthralling. And with a mere 76-minute runtime, audiences have no reasons to complain about having their patience tested.

Lázaro at Night brings all its inquiries and solipsist invitations to an extreme for a third act that ruptures the quotidian to plunge headfirst into fantasy. Specifically, a contemporary spin on the story of Aladdin and his genie who could fulfill any wish its master expressed. Before endless possibilities in limited supply, you are forced to reflect on what the heart most desires. Or, alternatively, what the body needs most. Or what the spirit can't live without. Or, as the case may be, what the hungry stomach demands. Also, Lázaro's mother is there, as disapproving as ever, irritated by a son who changed his name to her great discontent.

Within the trio's narrative, it's the return to a writing exercise Luisa had put to paper all those years ago, a glimpse into her youthful wisdom and another life left by the wayside as priorities changed. For better or worse, who can tell? What would she wish for now? What would her Aladdin demand? Would he learn humility? Would he still ask for a feast bound to be left half devoured, half destined to rot? The last shot, an unfinished meal captured through the protracted take of eating to a stop, is a strong choice. It reminds us that, for all the intellectual abstractions, this exercise is about concepts common to all of us. At its most visceral, Lázaro at Night is a film about base desires that end with the inability to enjoy the pleasures of food when you're full. It's a forlorn, resigned thing, dripping with moroseness just as the rain sings a pitter-patter on the soundtrack.

Lázaro at Night is playing as part of the 62nd NYFF's Currents section. It has also screened at TIFF and FIDMarseille, where the film celebrated its world premiere.