Tetro retro

Tetro : So I bit the bullet last week, and went from the safety and relative comfort of Zone 2 London into the madness of central. Piccadilly, no less. To pay an extortionate amount of money to go and watch a movie. But what a movie!

Tetro, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring the off kilter but bottomless Vincent Gallo, was one of the most beautiful films I’ve watched in a long time. A self-estranged man, Tetro, comes to Buenos Aires to escape the turmoil of la familia, and his past. But it finally catches up with him, when his young brother Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) from NYC, finds himself in the area when the boat he is waitering on docks for repairs. The young brother gets to know the older one, who is terse, short tempered and limping from a road accident, mostly through the kindness of Tetro’s girlfriend, Miranda (Maribel Verdú).

Revelations are unavoidable, as the persistent Bennie, despite Tetro’s will, gradually pulls off the dust sheets to the reasons behind Tetro’s anger and chain smoking . The past plays out in vivd technicolour, bringing the confusion of that past to life. The present plays out in spot lights, humour and pain, all muted in black and white, and all the shades in between. But, there’s not much colour needed, with the characters so rich and deep, carved intricately by the harshness of life. They live on once the credits roll.