L'Eden

In the jungle of Columbia, there is an experimental prison consisting of an overgrown former estate, where a small group of teen boys convicted of multiple or serious crime are sent. Good warden Alvaro tries to rehabilitate the boys using mystic threapies including laying of hand. Bad warden Goody is more interested in giving the boys hard work with few tools. There are a couple of other occasional adults of significance. The owner of the estate wants the place cleaned up, and is not interested in punishment or rehabilitation. A prison inspector checks on the kids, and the wardens are infuriated when one of them complains.

The central story revolves around friends Eliú and El Mono. One (justifiably) wants his father killed, and one night while high on drugs they do it - except that the killed the wrong man. Now the body (which they dumped in a cave) is missing, while the dead man's relatives are after them.

This jungle is dark and brooding, even in the daytime. There are tensions even when the wardens are away, as the in-charge boys try to keep the others from slacking off. The boys (non-actors recruited from a wide casting call) are reasonably OK as troubled youths, though the non-imprisoned brother seems particularly wooden.

I saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival, with a Q+A with writer-director Andrés Ramírez Pulido. From his work as troubled teen boys, he found that they tended to hate their fathers and love their mothers, and in the film the wardens attempt to be surrogate fathers (without much success). He alo wondered that, given genetics and upbringing, whether some members of the younger generation would be doomed to a lifetime of trouble - though the film suggests that some may escape that fate.

Overall, I found the film thematically too dark.

Rather than go to prison, teenagers and convicted murderers Eliu and El Mono (the Monkey) are sent to a remote and isolated work camp instead. A few thugs guard the pack of teens and force them, through frequent threats and beatings, to clear a jungle of thick brush and small trees. El Mono refuses to bend to anyone's will, pushes back against the guards, treats even small kindnesses with contempt and violence, and when he tries to escape, all hell breaks loose and all must fend for themselves.

"Art is a bridge between the visible and the invisible," said director Andres Ramirez Pulido who was present at this Toronto International Film Festival screening. He meant that his film allows the world to see the hidden lives of these troubled teens. It is one of the things I love about watching international and independent films in that I get to take a trip into the Colombian underground.

Filmed from the point of view of Eliu, La Jauria is innovative, surprising, and a true work of art. The gaze of Eliu and his body language tells his story without words and reveals the violence inside him. La Jauria combines silence with bursts of drums and haunting music, flashbacks to the night of the crime, a dance sequence, and beautiful camera work. The way the film unravels is different and eerie, and with limited dialogue, it unfolds a dream. In one of the amazing sequences of the film there are people who are part of Eliu's life that appear to him in a sort of vision or delusion.

In some strange twist of Colombian justice, the perpetrators of crimes and relatives of the victims meet to talk things out. In casting the main characters Pulido met with many troubled boys and uncovered that most of them hated and rejected their fathers. Pulido intends to open our eyes, minds, and hearts to these kids and wonders whether we are capable of change; a change in destiny for each youth who finds themselves in these situations, and a change in the way we administer justice as a society. La Jauria (The Pack) first appeared at Cannes. "I found the light," is what Pulido desires Eliu to say, "and I hope for it for you too."