El Regreso (2014) Online

Short films are a peculiar medium. Sometimes it's used as a way to exercise the narrative skills of the filmmaker, and sometimes it can be exploited in an interesting way so it can tell a story can only be told in that medium.

In The Homecoming we have the story of Tienlu, a little girl that is traveling through a terrible world, one that seems almost post apocalyptic, where she is surviving while searching for a place, which could be more in her memories than in the world surrounding her.

The short film is based on a short story written by Alán Islas, and it was adapted to the screen by himself, Nadia Islas, Eduardo Escobar and César Guevara (full disclosure, he's a friend of mine) and it was made using stop motion with sculptures created by Raymundo González and post-production and editing made by César himself.

The character and set design is quite well made. It has reminiscences of the work made by artists like Dave McKean (who you might known as a cover artist of the Sandman graphic novels) within the design of the visual aspects, which makes an attractive world that exists between the post-apocalyptic and the dream lands.

While the visual work is interesting and has a nice narration made by the voice of Hugo Gamba (the all-knowing teller of the story), there are some details that don't quite work within the narrative, such as the adaptation that was made from the text to the screen. The main plot is quite simple: a little girl that still has hope in a world that is terrible. However, there are redundancy in the elements of the story. If the voice-over tells us that she is walking, we see her walking. If the voice tells us that she is looking for a place to rest, we see her looking for a place where she wants to rest. This makes the storytelling repetitive and shows certain indulgence to the viewer since it doesn't only shows but also tells everything with both, words and pictures.

The filmmakers are a capable bunch, however there are some details that show that they are more concern in telling "an interesting tale" instead of something more personal, something with it's own identity. The character design is attractive however it can hardly show human expressions. The story is being told by somebody else, which creates a sense of distance with the character. Her motivation, feelings, sense of direction, everything feels as distant as the voice of the narrator. There could be a sense of danger created by the terrible surroundings where the character is located, however, since we can't have a real connection with her, the danger seems irrelevant to us. We have been told that Tienlu is a 9 year old girl, however there is nothing in her actions that show her age. The same happens with several elements in the story that can be known if we read the synopsis or watch an interview with the creative team, but are not really present in the story itself.

In a similar way the fantastic themes of the story, such as the myths that are mentioned, feel more like lines instead of constructed shapes within the image that the author want to create. It's almost like in the original story they were afraid of creating a complete mythology. Even when you won't be showing it to the viewer, it helps to create a universe behind the single story that will be protected to the screen. Simple details such as give names to the "ancient gods" and mention some characteristics of them could help to give them identity and this helps the story itself, even if these characters are only mentioned or are just a fragment of the imagination of the main character. After all, it's not the same to say that the world meet it's end by generic entity no. 37, than saying that it was all caused by Loki's mischief, Anansi's games or Dionysius's hangover.

The short film earned the award for Best Short Film from Guanajuato in this year's GIFF (Guanajuato International Film Festival) and has been part of the official selection in several international film festivals. This shows the quality of the film, which is good and is evidence of the talent of the team that created it. I'm really looking forward to see what they can do in future projects, since The Homecoming is an intriguing vision of a fantastic world that survives only because of a little girl's imagination. Hey! They ought to put that as a quote on the movie poster.

Tienlu is roaming the desolated wasteland of a cold and empty post-apocalyptic world. She dreams of things that she couldn't possibly know, like lush fields of grass and flowers and the sun, for she was born into the world as it is. Yet her memory keeps flashing these images of ancestors long gone. She runs into the ruins of fallen civilizations always cold, always starving.

Tienlu is the last survivor of what could be a nuclear holocaust and she believes that she was born into the world as it is, for she has mutated and hardly resembles a common human being. It is only when she encounters an old painting of her mother and herself that she realizes that this world is dead and that she was alive when everything was still green. Tienlu had erased any memory of this knowledge perhaps following a trauma or as a coping mechanism to survive the environment. The short never specifies for how long she has been walking the scorched earth by herself, she's shown to be constantly hungry and we never know what she does to feed herself. It is possible that the holocaust just occurred briefly before the events of the film, and Tienlu is actually wandering completely shell-shocked and mutated by the radiation as the sole survivor of the world.

Homecoming has a grungy and gritty yet beautiful look, the cinematography perfectly conveys the atmosphere of desolation and darkness that appears in every frame, as the stop motion animation is raw and it achieves an atmosphere of both beauty and melancholy in a short story that is influenced by such works as "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson and "Planet Of The Apes". Tienlu herself is wonderfully expressive and possesses an effective range of emotions which is complimented by the narration, giving it the aura of a post-apocalyptic fairy tale.

A commendable work of animation and imagination.

Enrrico Wood – Oaxaca Filmfest's Curator