Thursday Till Sunday (Spanish: De jueves a domingo), 2012.
Written and Directed by Dominga Sotomayor Castillo.
Starring Santi Ahumada, Emiliano Freifeld, Paola Giannini, Francisco Pérez-Bannen, Jorge Becker and Axel Dupré.
SYNOPSIS:
A family of four take a road-trip from the capital of Santiago to the desert somewhere in the north of Chile.
Thursday Till Sunday follows a small family as they leave Santiago, Chile on a family vacation. The film is set so that the audience sees the problems between the parents as seen from the view of eldest child, Lucia.
For a film that is only 96 minutes long it felt like an eternity. For long periods of time it seemed like nothing was happening; there was no story or character progression, just an everyday family holiday filmed and thrown onto screen. I felt like I was stuck at a relative’s house being forced to watch their latest trip abroad in agonising detail. The problem stems from the audience seeing everything from the point of view of Lucia. She’s only a peripheral character when it comes to the issues between her parents, who are trying to hide and protect her from their problems. As such, she only sees and hears snippets during the movie and they are far too small and infrequent to really grab the viewer’s attention or emotions.
I had no qualms with the quality of the acting within Thursday Till Sunday; both the children and the parents do an admiral job. They act and feel like a real family and the tension between the parents translates to a believable frosty relationship and you do wonder if they are only together for the sake of their kids. The director needed to be reined in. All too often an excruciatingly long scene of nothing happening plays out, one such example is the 30 seconds of watching the shadow of the family car flickering speedily across a rocky ridge. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all very pretty, but it added nothing to the experience or the story.
Thursday Till Sunday is a foreign language film; there are subtitles – which I have no issue with. What I did have issue with was the speed that the subtitles flash by. I’m a quick reader and on numerous occasions I struggled to read what was displayed. At other times I was happily engrossed in what was happening only to be yanked out of the story by a few lines of poor grammatical English. It was an unneeded distraction to a film that’s tough on concentration at the best of times.
Thursday Till Sunday is an apt name for the film, as that’s how long it felt like I was watching it. It is very much a case of pretty style over anything of substance, which is a shame as I thought the acting was superb throughout.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Andy Naylor – Follow me on Twitter
