Cuatro Paredes (2021)

 

Director: Matthew Porterfield

Cast: Bárbara López as Karla

Ephemeral Waves

 

Even with a small steak, you're still eaten the whole cow.

Sometimes it is better not to have a review, but instead create merely a diary entry for some films. Less a critique, amateur or otherwise, but a document that a film exists, a short film in this case from Matthew Porterfield, an independent director from Baltimore, Maryland who directed feature length films like Putty Hill (2011). This short film, shot in Mexico, begins hinting at a lighter tone than it may suggest, that as a young woman named Karla (Bárbara López) is driving, only to bring up a blue balloon and begin blowing it. Sounding less pleasant as it goes, the non-diegetic soundtrack continuing to suggest she is doing so one does with a paper bag, as we see the car driving through the countryside, Cuatro Paredes is marked by more.

It is a short film made in mind to the passing of Porterfield's father. Set within the first anniversary of her father's death, the film's scenario was composed in two days, shot in two days, set in the area Porterfield had moved to and improvised from this scenario of a small timescale to work with¹. The film exists in a world where Karla is the only figure onscreen, baring the cats who were in the area Matthew Porterfield with his girlfriend¹, but she is still connected to the world. The film, more abstract in tone, is a literal short story based on mood.

This is where, rather than review Cuatro Paredes, this is more of a diary entry for me, to mark the film's existence, that within twenty minutes I experienced a fascinating work for that small time. The film's mark in reality is there - the mark of a character morning their father, that the film is in tribute to one of the cats onscreen¹, the one actress Bárbara López sings to on the bed with a cough, which I had wondered about watching the film only to realise that was real. It is also a fascinating film to watch to see how one, in a small timeframe, tells a story but without need nessecarily from a plot structure. That mood is the dictator for what progresses: this is something found in avant-garde cinema in what one experiences when a film, of any length, creates a fulfilling experience, but also a character piece like this reaches its meaning in a perspective found than event.

The film is also more about presence. That even separate from everyone, there are people there for her, phoning her, leaving Karla messages, ones which are more abstract in how they match her own contemplation of herself, her thoughts, in mind to her father now becoming absent. Karla's thoughts on the drive in the morning, debating what exists and passes through a person's mind in a random memory, expresses the sense of consciousness. Her ending monologue, which Bárbara López memorised in a slight time¹, becomes more interesting in imagining the connections of her real life as much as cinema and storytelling itself, the interconnecting pieces. Trying to build a memory palace whilst on acid, Karla recounts her palace and an elaborate story of a soldier who married the mother of the child he killed, the daughter their sire who grows up into a sex worker, a vast complex that reminds me of a Italo Calvino passage from Invisible Cities (1974) in its tone or, with a further push, fully into Jorge Luis Borges' territory.

This was my first Matthew Porterfield work at all, requiring more than one viewing to fully gauge with; as a text, it offers the idea of cinema being more elusive and drawn to forms that are more curious than to merely tell a narrative. That may seem vague but, whilst a film from a North American director that just happens to be made in Mexico, with non-English dialogue, this evokes how I got into world cinema because of its complete unpredictability, that even when with more fully formed narratives they were more character pieces when they interested the most as dramas. Obviously, if this has to be a review, I recommend seeing the film if you can; for interesting for me however, to mark its existence if it lasts for decades or is forgotten, is more how this, as a literal fragment on purpose, has a lot to ponder in just twenty minutes and that writing the review is in respect for its creators' hard work.

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1) A great contextual piece comes from Matthew Porterfield himself, from his MUBI premier piece Matthew Porterfield Introduces His Film "Cuatro paredes" from April 13th 2021.