Film
Ema
- Director
- Pablo Larrain
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 107 mins
Chilean director Pablo Larrain returns home for his first film since his English-language debut, 2016’s Oscar-nominated Jackie, and re-teams with his No and Neruda star Gael Garcia Bernal for what’s billed as his first contemporary drama.
Bernal and Mariana Di Girolamo play an estranged married couple who reside in the seaport of Valparaiso, where they each work for the same dance company. They also blame one another for abandoning their adoptive, rather destruictive son Polo, who’s been packed off back to the orphanage. Fans of Larrain’s impressive oeuvre should perhaps beware that Ema marks something of a stylistic departure in its overly mannered approach, which divided critics when the film was unveiled at Venice. “A work of self-conscious experimentalism that’s too stilted and distancing to invite involvement,” was the Hollywood Reporter‘s verdict.
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