Año Bisiesto by Michael Rowe

The domestic realm is a wild space. A land of extremes where boredom, loneliness and despair make you crave the slightest excitement. The connection with the outside world is thin: glances across to the neighbours’ window, phone conversations, the glowing TV screen, the barren desert of the Internet, and, sometimes, the interruption of a stranger; a lover with no name fleeing right after sex. Dreaming, loving, crying, and just letting it all go – here is the life of Laura, the central character of Año Bisiesto.

The film delves us into the life of this sweet and unobtrusive woman adrift in Mexico City. The first forty minutes set in motion a terrible machine: a day to day routine with no obvious exit. There are no camera moves in this story and the shots are long. The flowing of time itself seems to be out of order. We wonder, as Laura does: when is something different going to happen? The slow pace absorbs us into an everlasting expectation. Days pass as she crosses them out on her calendar, waiting for a mysterious X-marked day at the end of the month.

Michael Rowe is from Australia but lives in Mexico, and he shot with a local crew. For his first feature as a director, the necessities of production pushed him towards a choice that, in the end, is the strength of the film. Except for the opening scene, in a supermarket (a setting that plants the idea of consumption and seals Laura’s fate as an object used by men), everything takes place in the apartment of our heroine. As Rowe says, “houses are a metaphor for the psyche. This film explores the deepest recesses of Laura’s mind”. Indeed, it is a full intimacy that binds us to our protagonist: whether masturbating, shaving between her legs, or cleaning herself after sex; the intrusive camera adds a deeper level to our understanding.

Terminus: sex

How to break the pattern of isolation? Sex seems the answer, but for Laura it is too short, too quick, too hypocritical and, eventually, not enough. When she meets Arturo, a somehow different lover, she finds excitement through pain and humiliation during sexual intercourse. She wants more each time; the tension increases until the very end of the film.

Maybe here lies the remedy to loneliness: extreme experience. The ultimate sensation, the most ambiguous and thrilling – death – comes onto the horizon. And the more you seek pleasure, the more you move towards the edge. Here sex - as drugs or violence elsewhere - is a dangerous game, shamelessly played indoors. A game for salvation that no one can judge.

By Romain Pichon-Sintes