Tremors, 2019.
Directed by Jayro Bustamante.
Starring Juan Pablo Olyslager, Diane Bathen, Mauricio Armas Zebadua, Sabrina de la Hoz, Maria Telon and Rui Frati.
SYNOPSIS:
In Guatemala, a man’s decision to come out as gay causes problems with his evangelical Christian family, not to mention his wife and kids.
The opening scenes of Guatemalan drama Temblores (Tremors) could be mistaken for a funeral. We follow our protagonist’s arrival to the opulent home of his family and his relatives can be seen standing around, largely dressed in black and anxiously awaiting his arrival as if they’re all prepared for an act of shared mourning. But when Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) finally shows up, he’s the one greeted with revulsion. Though his ‘crime’ is not made immediately explicit, the audience soon surmises that he has come out as gay.
This is an enormous betrayal in the eyes of his ultra-Catholic family, especially as he is married to Isa (Diane Bathen) and they have two young children. To say the atmosphere is frosty would be an understatement, with one older relative declaring plainly that Pablo is “no longer part of this family”. When a mild, but significant Earth tremor shakes the walls of the house, one family member declares it to be “a punishment from on high”. As he is shunted towards conversion therapy by his relatives and sacked from his lucrative job for failing to observe the company’s “flawless moral code”, Pablo moves in with new flame Francisco (Mauricio Armas Zebadúa) and attempts to build his new life.
At the core of Tremors is a strange discrepancy between the melodramatic hysteria of its plotting and the low-key style of its filmmaking and performances. Olyslager’s leading man turn, particularly, is a very internal one that seems at odds with the overwrought religious services and characters yelling about “carnal desires”. It’s a good performance, but is a turn so subtle and subdued that it never quite communicates the inner turmoil of the character. It never feels like he’s really experiencing much indecision or uncertainty until a particular tipping point sends the narrative skidding down an entirely different track.
And it’s the constant disconnect of tone and content that makes Tremors a slightly disappointing experience. There’s no doubting the atmosphere of Luis Armando Arteaga’s impressively gloomy cinematography, but writer-director Jayro Bustamante’s script doesn’t have the intelligence and depth to match the filmmaking craft on show. Often, the feel is one of a slow, methodical trudge through a story that, to be brutally honest, has been very well-trodden in recent cinema.
Gay conversion therapy, in particular, has been the centre of several recent films, including last year’s exceptional The Miseducation of Cameron Post. The strongest elements of Bustamante’s film, though, are the scenes of the therapy, which have an absurd quality akin to an overblown prison movie, presided over by Sabrina De La Hoz’s sinister pastor. The scenes are almost comedic, with their communal showers and half-naked wrestling aimed to de-eroticise the male body for those taking part in the therapy. Tremors would’ve been wise to shift the focus of the story on to this therapy, which skewers the religious indoctrination on show.
Bustamante’s film is pretty scathing towards the notion of archaic religious attitudes, most notably in a scene in which Pablo’s children discuss their father’s “disease” and whether they might be able to catch it from him. It’s a sequence that lays bare the dangers of unquestioning acceptance of religious indoctrination, where a shield designed to protect children actually leaves them ignorant and frightened. This intrigue, though, is sadly absent from much of Tremors, which winds slowly and with little momentum towards an ending that is incredibly bleak and might have been potent, were it not for the limping emptiness of what came before.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Tom Beasley is a freelance film journalist and wrestling fan. Follow him on Twitter via @TomJBeasley for movie opinions, wrestling stuff and puns.
