The Wait

Questions of power and responsibility, individuals and systems, civilised values and evolutionary pressures haunt F Javier Gutiérrez’s moody thriller. A festival hit since granted a well-deserved cinematic release, it sets up the ostensibly simple story of a man whose surrender to temptation costs him everything he loves, only to expand into something richer and more complex as additional layers of wrongdoing are revealed and nature itself seems to express its offence at the misdeeds of its human offspring.

That man is Eladio (Victor Clavijo), a hard-working groundskeeper who lives with his wife Marcia (Ruth Díaz), ten-year-old son Floren (Moisés Ruiz) and dog Yulen on the estate of the wealthy Don Francisco (Pedro Casablanc), a figure whom we initially see only in shadow. One day Eladio is approached by another prosperous man, Don Carlos (Manuel Morón), who offers him money to expand the number of hunting stands on the land from ten to 13 – something that he knows could be dangerous. At first he refuses, but Marcia (not merely a passive character) points out that they could really use the money. Perhaps they both imagine that any risk will be borne by other people. They don’t understand the forces at play.

It’s in those greater forces that The Wait invests much of its narrative weight. When things go wrong, Eladio must wrestle with his own guilt and with his urge to blame it all on Don Carlos, but he might also wonder at the imbalance of power that tempted him to take such a risk for that, to other men, is pocket change. As his situation begins to deteriorate still further, the advantages that this presents for others do not escape him, and he begins to investigate patterns which initially seem to make no sense but which gradually come together to reveal something even more disturbing.

Can any of it make any difference? Don Franciso suggests that it is Eladio’s conscience that is destroying him; perhaps others wear their sins more lightly. The film begis with musings on the relationship between land and family, and it will not escape viewers’ attention that, whilst Eladio lives close to the land, he does not own it. The weight of his sin lies heavy upon it, however, as even the forces of nature seem to be turning against him. In his dreams he envisions himself first as a traitor, then as one transforming into an animal, into something monstrous and unnatural.

Clavijo’s tightly wound performance keeps the story feeling taut and personal as its larger themes develop. Appearing in almost every scene, he delivers a mesmerising portrait of a man gradually eaten alive by his guilt yet compelled to keep on living as he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the estate. Gutiérrez alternates between keeping the camera close and pulling back to emphasise his isolation in the dusty scrubland that makes up the estate, a landscape from which all hints of verdure slowly fade as the color palate shifts towards red.

With simple tools, Gutiérrez has carved out a story about a simple man which has much greater resonance. It’s a parable of sorts, and a grim one, but nevertheless it makes for compelling viewing.