Rowe’s Leap Year to expand in Mexico
Australian ex-pat Michael Rowe’s Camera d’Or-winning film Año Bisiesto (Leap Year) surpassed expectations for its release in its native country,
“Año Bisiesto was a big hit at the box office on its opening weekend. More copies will be distributed; thanks to everyone who saw it,” said Rowe.
In an editorial for the newspaper El Universal, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal – who was part of the Jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and whose distribution company Canana is releasing the film – urged people to see Leap Year:
Perhaps one of the best answers to one of the hardest questions about cinema pertains to our times and the overwhelming structure of a shopping centre: What is the difference between an art house film and entertainment? The answer triggers an aphorism: “An art house film is that which lasts beyond the parking lot on the way home”.
This explanation makes much more sense after seeing four films a day over 11 days; there are some that still resonate in the memory, surviving the infection that seeing so many films in such a short time can cause.
I remember perfectly the geography of the journalist’s apartment; I could even describe the view from her window, and I’ve only been there once.
Even after so many months since I first saw it at Cannes, Leap Year is still alive in my memory, even though I had seen 22 films in one and a half weeks. You could say that the fact that I remember the distribution of the space in that little apartment talks about the excellent film grammar that Michael Rowe speaks.
In more ambitious and abstract words, I could say that Leap Year is soaked with “film truth”. This truth that I’m talking about is that where I don’t stop to observe the technicalities, and I don’t get carried away by the emotional gesture I could – or not – feel; I simply see, listen and feel the story, enjoying not only the narrative, but also the wonderful moments of cinema that this filmmaker’s first feature possesses.
I remember February 29 crossed out in the calendar, the used razors in the bathroom, the plant by the window, the voice I didn’t hear in that phone call, the heat in that room, the knives on the table. I remember everything because I “understood it”; I incorporated it to an overwhelming sensation of having been there, but I never really lived it. I experienced it by seeing the film.
The film navigates through an immense sea of blades, that is so foreign to many people, and nevertheless we can understand not only emotionally but rationally what is happening to that itinerant couple.
It is perhaps one of the best portraits of solitude that I’ve seen in my life. The loneliness that keeps company, that which doesn’t exist without the presence of the other, who completes it.
There is genius behind that alchemy that can pull off that triple somersault the characters perform over and over again, in a generous and humble manner. The film doesn’t stop to congratulate itself over the scarce financial resources the creatives had at hand, and it doesn’t point out the fact it’s all happening in one apartment. The film doesn’t stop to make a comment about itself, no voice other that the characters’; it’s a film that gallops once it starts.
A lot can be said about a great film, but little can be described without feeling you’d ruin the experience of seeing it for the first time. That’s why I’ll use this last paragraph to sincerely invite everyone to see it. And I also want to congratulate everyone who worked in it, for making such a brilliant and honest film.
I urge you to see it, and I urge you to also see the next film made by this Mexico City wallaby, Michael Rowe.
The film’s Australian distributor is Transmission Films. It will premiere locally at the Hola Mexico Film Festival.
