Watch From Afar For Free

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The plot of the film starts out well enough, an older man with daddy issues that are never explained gets his rocks off literally by looking at the exposed backs and butts of boys he picks up on the street and pays. He never touches them, just looks. He keeps his house meticulously and appears to be obsessive compulsive, unable to express emotion, and to have an aversion to being touched. He also stalks the father he hates. Then he picks up a street punk who whacks him in the head and steals his money. He begins to stalk the heterosexual boy and finds he lives a violent life of poverty which eventually will end up with him badly beaten. He meets with him again and tells him that there is more money which he can have if he will keep him company. That's where it falls apart. The viewer would have been okay if the boy had slowly come around in response to father like kindness in a hurt/comfort manner. The viewer would have been okay if Armando had fallen into a one sided unrequited love with a straight boy. But one moment the boy is aggressively straight the next he is all over Armando who can't respond to him because of his touch aversion. The boy blames Armando's father and kills him. They finally have sex. Then Armando follows him to the store the next morning and calls the cops on him. It is possible that the plot twist was meant to be that Armando was setting up the murder of his father all along, but even so, the whole thing comes across as unbelievable. There are major holes in the believability. Probably biggest is why the heterosexual Elder would just suddenly want him enough to kill for him. There are plenty of others though. The older man shows almost no emotion though the entire film and the dialogue is barely there one liners. He follows his father and says once and only once that he wishes he was dead. Why would Elder draw the conclusion that his father was the source of his touch issues? He isn't a psychiatrist or even overly bright. Why turn him in when no one saw him and he even collected his brass? It just falls apart. It is billed as a romance/drama but there is no romance in it at all. It seems to be headed somewhere for a while and that is why I give it 2 but then it just meanders off and dies.

I am not going to describe the plot of the film as you have read that in other reviews and in the film synopsis. This film was recently shown in London and I really wonder who writes the reviews for such movies or even worse who are the bodies who give them prices in some festivals...It was a disaster, the audience was packed and in the first 40 minutes within the movie I noticed people leaving the auditorium. I was feeling the same but I was in a middle place so I decided to endure. They did have a good plot for a film but there was no script, all monosyllabic interventions and the worst of silence in movies is NO MUSIC. How important to have some back music to enhance a silence. But silence, no dialogues and no music all the time, becomes soporific. Literally at times it felt that I was watching a security camera recording. There was no acting, apart from the face expressions of the main characters in certain scenes, well difficult to act if you have nothing to say most of the time...The message in that movie could have been better portrayed: a sad middle age gay man confused and frustrated with his own life and the way he dealt with his sexual desires, together with young men desperate to make a living in a horrid "machista" society with no hopes for a better financial future. From a technical point of view the camera angles and the focus did not work as intended, you can sense that if you are familiar with the technicalities of movie making. Whoever was in charge of the camera did a LOUSY job. I would not recommend it, but is a clear example of a BAD MOVIE, which will only be remembered, if, for the punishment caused to viewers.

Unfortunately, I decided to watch this movie in the bout of Mumbai Film Festival at the cost of the other far more appealing movies. 'From afar' asserts the eminent maxim: Appearances are deceiving. This movie is an utter waste of time with no particular message and keeps you discontented and gives one the reason to believe that something is wrong with the movie. The movie starts with the lead actor i.e. Armando stalking vulnerable guys Willy-nilly with an intention to bring them home and fulfill his desire of watching the naked back of men from strict distance. By the way, he's not gay; No! He just has a peculiar knack of pleasure by doing that. Eventually he meets the other lead actor, Elder who also happens to be a violent guy in street gang. Armando despite having violent encounters with Elder and non accomplishment of the penultimate motive with which Elder had been invited and paid; continues to pursue Elder. At some point Armando looks after Elder when he learns that Elder has been injured by some street fights which causes Elder to be intimate with Armando. Throughout the movie, Armando is shown to stalk an old guy intermittently with no specific reason. Elder, then as a gesture of payback kills the old man having a notion that its the only thing Armando wants. The movie is just meant to keep it afar from the audience!

'Desde Allá' (From Afar) slowly and carefully brings you into the world of Armando, a wealthy loner who spends his free time coercing Caracas street gang youths to go back to his apartment so he can enjoy their company while pleasuring himself. He finds Elder, another street youth, who he runs into trouble with at first, but eventually end up bonding to the point that their relationship becomes physical.In terms of both Armando and Elder's chemistry, it's nothing to rave on about. Because they are such opposites, it's easy to see how they clash, but that's as far as it goes. It's more of a strange encounter because they are such different people, especially Elder, who starts off the film as being vehemently homophobic but oddly changes after some time with a very limited showing of affection and care.The film, which recently won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, goes about its storytelling by long tracking shots or stationary frames that have a lot happening inside of them. Very little dialogue is exchanged, but looks and actions speak louder than words in this picture. While it keeps the suspense a bit on the up, others might want consistent dialogue, which this film doesn't have.The film should be praised for several things: talking about a taboo subject in a country like Venezuela, and showing the issues that are happening in the country, which includes the long lineups for basic necessities and consistent criminal activity.Without writing spoilers, what really makes this film is the ending. It's fairly open- ended, and it's a bit shocking to say the least. During the TIFF Q&A, Directory Lorenzo Vigas was rather inquisitive of the audience, trying to find out what they thought the ending was about. Not all films should provide the necessary answers for the viewer, but good films allow for interaction and further interpretation.On a further note, this film was NOT selected by Venezuela as its Best Foreign Film selection for the upcoming Academy Awards. I'm not sure if this has to do with the topic. I haven't seen the actual selection 'Gone with the River' (Lo que lleva el río), so I can't comment. However, it seems odd that this film, which is showing at several world film festivals, and was in competition for the Golden Lion — and won — was NOT Venezuela's official selection.