Martín Rejtman: The Surface of Things by Pablo Suárez translated by Marcela Goglio Amongst the diverse tendencies of the so-called "new Argentinean cinema," the small yet great oeuvre of Martín Rejtman is singularly emblematic. In Rapado, his first feature film, he explores with wit and oblique humor the moods of characters caught between drowsiness and apathy. In Silvia Prieto, a 27-year-old woman becomes obsessed when she discovers another woman of the same name. She decides to meet her, only to find out there may be even more Silvia Prietos. By appropriating certain characteristics of the absurd, Rejtman fluently constructs a delirious local version of the screwball comedy. With only two films under his belt, Rejtman has already become an artist as essential as he is unclassifiable. His first feature demonstrated that another type of cinema was possible in Argentina, one capable of pushing boundaries. Rapado was an absolute oasis in a land plagued by films with agonizing narratives, with neither depth nor genuine inspiration, and yet still subsidized by a State in favor of the status quo. Due to narrow-mindedness, Rapado was considered "without interest" bv the National Film Institute of Argentina (INCAA), while under the leadership of Julio Maharbiz. Among other things, it was criticized for portraying a youth with no goals or ideals –a "non-Argentinean" youth. After this experience, Rejtman decided not to submit the script of his next project to any producers. Instead, he embarked on two complementary roads in order to continue making independent film. On one hand, subsidies from abroad gave him an initial push: funding from Holland in the case of Rapado; and a subsidy from France, plus a loan from the INCAA during the administration that followed Maharbiz's, to finish Silvia Prieto. On the other hand, he transformed budget limitations into aesthetic virtues, making movies with the minimum at his disposal: just a camera, basic sound equipment, actor friends, very few props, and local neighborhoods as his main shooting locations. The most valuable lesson learned during two years of film studies at New York University, where Rejtman had to make one short per week, was to shoot with what is at hand. Without realizing it, he established a mode of production embraced by many other young filmmakers, both before and since: the art of working with a very small budget, and at times with no budget at all, as was the case with Silvia Prieto. Although before making Rapado he had already directed two shorts (Doli Returns Home and Sitting on a Suitcase), his first feature had a literary precedent. Rejtman wrote the short story Rapado, published in 1992, with the film transposition in mind Silvia Prieto also has its origins in literature. Rejtman adapted the script from an unfinished novel by his friend, Valeria Paván, choosing only a few situations and characters in order to create a script that is completely different from the central plot of the novel. That curious move from word to image epitomizes the logic behind Rejtman's narrative construction. Rejtman is interested in the situations and the recording of a scene. He sets up a given situation, and arranges the scene around its various elements. "I don't have a hypothesis before starting," he explains; I write with no subject in mind, without a story... For me, the moment of improvisation is at the writing stage, precisely when I have no idea where I am going. That's where the story comes together. After that, there is no improvisation, and the changes introduced in the script are minimal. Rejtman describes his work as "thought out but not intellectualized. That is the reason I will never put something somewhere because of what it means, because I have no idea what it could mean." By eschewing the overbearing need to bring enlightenment to his viewers – a pompous ideal typical of most previous Argentinean movies – Rejtman not only avoids being pretentious, but also leaves open the possibility of finding as many readings as spectators. The risk inherent in improvising with few guidelines is that the result is often a series of diffuse, loosely connected ideas. But there is nothing experimental in his method. On the contrary, his obsession for controlling the narration combined with his insistence on maintaining openness are so tightly connected that it is virtually impossible to think of them independently. The basic idea of recording a scene, according to Rejtman, is that the internal mise en scene should go hand in hand with the attempt to observe a simple story closely. In Rapado, the teenager whose motorcycle, money and even sneakers are stolen just wants to steal another motorcycle before the end of the night. The camera simply observes what happens, faithful to the act of recording the accumulation of small, unpredictable situations. The narration finds its own organic unity effortlessly, its apparent simplicity hiding a great complexity. With almost no dialogue, Rapado is a film that follows the rhythm of its characters. If it can be considered a witty look at the middle class and its pseudo-intellectual aspirations, Rejtman found the perfect tempo: a limbo inhabited by a family submerged in total apathy, a family so alienated that it doesn't even realize the absurdity of the situations it finds itself in. Yet the characters remain immutable; they are never deformed by that absurdity, for that would rupture the film's careful tone. In Silvia Prieto, the characters are also inert, but now riding with a different rhythm, at a greater speed. As an admirer of classical American cinema, Rejtman took cues from Hollywood's screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s, with directors Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges at the top of his list. A great comedy, Silvia Prieto is evidence of the maturity and consolidation of the director's style. That link to comedy started earlier: Rapado is permeated by a deadpan humor while Silvia Prieto combines a subtle humor that circulates from beginning to end with brilliant moments of absolute nonsense that could result in anything from sly, dry humor to outbursts of laughter. The camera, which in Rapado recorded action segments in long shots from beginning to end, works similarly in Silvia Prieto, from the first to the last word of every line of dialogue. Rejtman moves seamlessly from an almost silent film to another in which the characters talk virtually non-stop, even if they're deaf to each other in their monologues. "When I made Rapado, I felt that Argentinean cinema had too much dialogue, and bad dialogue at that," Rejtman says. What could I do to make actors talk in a way that I liked? They just have to say the dialogue, without dramatizing it…. what matters most to me is that they learn the musicality of the text. The text is studied and voiced. Without emphases of any kind. I think it works, because it maintains its coherence from beginning to end and that gives the film its tone. Needless to say, Rejtman despises excess. "I hate adornments, I hate artifice, I hate anything that's unnecessary," he says. His theoretical guidelines boil down to one phrase: cinema is surface [cinema es superficie], "because there really is nothing beyond the screen." Paradoxically, only by examining the bare surface can you reach a certain depth. Because essence, as Bresson understood it and Rejtman does too, can only be revealed on a flat screen that exteriorizes a universe without invading it. Besides the Bressonian cues to the actors, the elliptic construction of space – in which only a part is seen and never the totality of the surroundings – is another element that links Rejtman with Bresson, perhaps more in Rapado than in Silvia Prieto. In Rejtman's universe, the gaze encompasses many things, but is always in movement. It takes in the construction and dissolution of the characters' identities as they look for connections with others. Silvia Prieto, in an incredible gag, calls herself Luisa Ciccone, the anonymous name of the most famous woman in the world (Madonna). In Rapado, we see the teenager with his motorcycle, his only friend, and his parents, each in their own world. Rejtman's is a gaze always in movement, even if it moves only in circles. These films are neither optimistic nor pessimistic, because that would be too easy. They allow themselves a humor that ranges from an image of the protagonist of Rapado inexplicably riding a motorcycle inside his bedroom, the wheels turning without touching the floor, to the final, disconcerting scene of Silvia Prieto. And if there are no transition scenes in Rejtman's films, his characters at least are in constant transition: between adolescence and adulthood, between marrying and staying single, once they've reached their 30's. His characters will experience midlife crisis in his next film, not shot yet, Los guantes mágicos (The Magic Gloves). "It is also a comedy, but more so than Silvia Prieto," Rejtman explains. "It has its own center of gravity, this time a taxi driver who has just separated from his girlfriend, a guy who only cares about his car, even if thousands of things are happening around him." It's difficult to imagine this third Rejtman, especially when he says, enigmatically, that he knows very well what he wants to do, though he has no idea what the result will be. Pablo Suárez is a film critic for The Buenos Aires Herald and a member of FIPRESCI Argentina. Silvia Prieto and Rapado will be shown at Anthology Film Archives February XX-XX. Visit www.anthologyfilmarchives.org for more information.