Variety, Thursday, February 12, 2004

A Silent Love

By SCOTT FOUNDAS

Like last year’s Sundance entry “A Foreign Affair,” substantially Spanish-lingo Canadian pic “A Silent Love” offers a diverting spin on the mail-order-bride premise, making a charming feature debut for writer-director Federico Hidalgo and co-writer Paulina Robles (Hidalgo’s wife). Story of a middle-aged professor wedding a younger Mexican woman, only to find himself falling for the woman’s mother, pic largely plays down the ethnic stereotyping to deliver a carefully observed, fundamentally human roundelay about the wonders and horrors of looking for someone to love. Low-key nature coupled with older-skewing demographics won’t overly entice distribs, but pic could find an appreciative audience among disenfranchised adult moviegoers.

College film teacher Norman (Noel Burton) travels from Montreal to Mexico to meet Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), with whom he has been corresponding for some time via an Internet matchmaking Web site. Assured that computer models give their marriage “a 61% chance of success,” Gladys hesitatingly accepts Norman’s proposal. But before they can say “I do,” Gladys makes an impulsive demand: she will return with Norman to Canada only if he allows her to bring her widowed mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar). Norman agrees.

Back in Montreal, Norman and Gladys find themselves struggling to re-create the intoxicating mood of their written correspondence -- so much so that, at one point, Gladys asks Norman if he had help from somebody in writing his letters. Norman, meanwhile, begins to wonder if perhaps Gladys sees him only as a way to an eventual green card. But the real wrench in the works may be mom, much closer in age to Norman and, it turns out, a mature, intelligent beauty.

That could be the setup for a Hawks or Lubitsch farce (or, for that matter, a von Stroheim morality play -- helmer’s “Foolish Wives” is quoted by Hidalgo throughout), but the filmmakers set their rhythms at a more subdued pace, resulting in contemplative scenes about the need for companionship and the enigmatic nature of love. Such moments manage to play as quite funny in a bittersweet way, like Paul Cox’s “Lonely Hearts” and “Man of Flowers” -- rather than the slapstick the premise would seem to call for, a la “Something’s Gotta Give.”

The filmmakers have an utter respect for their characters, never forcing them into contrived situations. And the pleasure the mixed cast of Mexican and Canuck thesps take in being afforded such roles is nearly palpable. Vet stage and screen thesp Burton makes for a wonderfully against-type romantic lead, wrapped in the essential shyness of a man who has failed nearly as much in his love life as he has succeeded in his intellectual one. Bauche, who viewers will recognize from “Amores Perros,” radiates a crackling intelligence and south-of-the-border spunk. But pic is commanded by Salazar, who basks gloriously in one of those rare roles that allows an actress of “a certain age” to seem funny, sexy, vital and entirely unafraid to show a few wrinkles.

With the cinematographer Francois Dagenais, Hidalgo employs a handheld camera and natural lighting schemes to create an unfussy, lucid mise-en-scene, marked by a strong sense of how to arrange the actors within the frame.

Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, January 22, 2004

Montreal filmmaker Federico Hidalgo takes A Silent Love to Sundance festival

JIM HOLT
Canadian Press

PARK CITY, Utah (CP) - Director Federico Hidalgo was at the Sundance Film Festival this week with his first feature film, A Silent Love - the story of an aging silent movie buff in Montreal and his Mexican mail-order bride.

Hidalgo, with humility and a soft voice, begins by defining communication when asked to explain his film’s appeal. In short, believable characters and real dialogue win audiences, he says.

The lonely film buff in A Silent Love speaks little Spanish, and his young bride speaks little English.

They feel their way through the relationship by interpreting gestures and facial expressions - the same way, as observed by the film’s lead character, people do when they watch silent movies.

“He speaks in a formal cadence, gentlemanly and non-verbal,” Hidalgo explains.

“The young woman is intensely verbal. Communication is what, exactly, is missing for her. One of the things she wants in a companion is someone to talk to.

“And, when that isn’t there, she has to deal with solitude.”

The film has five screenings at Sundance and runs 100 minutes with English subtitles under Spanish dialogue.

The film festival has grown steadily in size and popularity since it began in 1978, with an estimated 40,000 movie lovers and industry people descending on this snowy ski town. Films from more than 37 countries are being screened.

If the appeal of A Silent Love lies in its strength of characters and dialogue then half that credit goes to Hidalgo’s wife and co-writer, Paulina Robles, who emigrated from her home in Mexico to Canada.

Hidalgo also writes from a position of authority, capitalizing on his experience having taught film history at Montreal’s Concordia University.

Together Robles and Hidalgo have written a love story that rings true. They labour hard to sidestep stereotypes and bravely define complex characters. Response to the film has been positive across cultures.

“People were pleased when they saw the film,” Robles says. “Even the Mexican people who have seen it. I draw from my personal experience and write with a point of view that is Canadian, as an immigrant coming to a country that is very welcoming for other cultures.”

In an effective poetic way, Hidalgo uses silent film as a metaphor for this story of silent love - specifically, sad comic Buster Keaton who is knocked down repeatedly by a spinning house in the silent film, One Week.

A Silent Love stars Noel Burton as Norman the lonely professor, Vanessa Bauche as his young restless wife Gladys and Susana Salazar as the woman’s stoic mother.

Although A Silent Love is his first feature film, Hidalgo has directed several award-winning short films and two documentaries - Loteria (1997) and Gesture (1999) shot in Mexico with Toronto-based filmmaker Roberto Ariganello.

A Silent Love is one of 19 Canadian films selected from hundreds of competing film submissions to Sundance.

© The Canadian Press 2004

The Gazette, Monday, January 12, 2004

The Sundance contender

Federico Hidalgo’s multicultural debut feature, A Silent Love, will have its world premiere at the premier showcase for independent films in North America

BRENDAN KELLY
The Gazette

In A Silent Love, Montreal filmmaker Federico Hidalgo set out to capture the multicultural life his family lives in Mile End.

It has been several weeks since Montreal filmmaker Federico Hidalgo found out that his debut feature, A Silent Love, had been picked to have its world premiere at the famed Sundance Film Festival. But the 42-year-old writer-director is still on a high and with good reason.

Sundance, which kicks off Thursday in picturesque Park City, Utah, is considered to be the premier showcase for independent film in North America and has helped launched some of the top indie hits of the past decade.

Nabbing a spot at the fest founded by Robert Redford is a plus for any filmmaker. But it’s even more notable for a first-time feature director like Hidalgo, who has only a couple of shorts to his credit and was paying the rent on his Mile End apartment not so long ago teaching English as a second language.

“We were elated,” Hidalgo said, in a recent interview at the office of production company Atopia in the Cooper Building on St. Laurent Blvd. “I was truly excited. It’s beyond what we imagined would be our premiere. I had to go outside and walk around.”

Hidalgo and his producer, Pascal Maeder from Atopia, will be leaving Montreal for snowy Utah Thursday morning, and they are well aware that the Sundance screenings will be critical for the fate of this Canadian film.

Clearly one of the elements that opened the door to Sundance was the fact that A Silent Love stars hot Mexican actress Vanessa Bauche, who made a name for herself around the globe with her performance in 21 Grams’s director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Oscar-nominated Amores perros.

A Silent Love is a bilingual, bicultural comic-drama that unspools half in Spanish, half in English, and roams from Montreal to small-town Mexico. It tells the story of a quiet, middle-age Montreal college professor, Norman, played by seasoned local thespian Noel Burton. He meets a beautiful Mexican woman, Gladys (Bauche), via an Internet dating agency. They decide to marry, but Gladys set one condition before their move to Montreal - her widowed mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), has to accompany them. Norman agrees and, without giving too much away, their marriage soon falters and creates no small amount of emotional sparks among the unlikely trio.

The $1.5 million film is a deeply personal project for Hidalgo. The Argentine-born writer-director, who has lived in Montreal for close to 20 years, penned the script with his wife, Paulina Robles, who immigrated from Mexico to Quebec several years ago. They set out to create a project that captured some sense of the multi-lingual, multicultural life they and their two young sons live in the Mile End district of Montreal.

“It’s not autobiographical, but it’s very personal,” said Hidalgo, who began his show-biz career as a member of the infamous mid-’80s alternative stage troupe Theatre Shmeatre. “Some of the situations and feelings up there on-screen are very familiar to me and my wife. Our home life is in Spanish, and so we experience living in three languages in Montreal. It felt natural to represent that in the film, though there’s only a little bit of French in the film. It’s one of the things we really like about Montreal. We really value that cosmopolitan aspect of life here and we try to give a sense of how exciting and intriguing that is for this young Mexican woman. Norman wants to practise his Spanish and his wife wants to practise her English, so language is an important part of the film.”

While the film is bilingual, the process of making it was often trilingual. Much of the Quebec crew was francophone and the cast is a mix of English and Spanish-speaking actors. They also shot part of the film in Mexico, where the linguistic mix got even more complicated. But juggling three languages really wasn’t such a problem, Hidalgo noted. If anything, it was just like another day in Mile End.

“I thought it might be a real burden to translate everything, but it wasn’t,” said Hidalgo, who has two film degrees from Concordia. “On the set, a lot of people spoke Spanish and English. Basically people found a way to communicate.”

bkelly@thegazette.canwest.com
© Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette

Le Devoir, Saturday, January 24, 2004

Un Montréalais à la grand-messe de Robert Redford

Martin Bilodeau

Le Montréalais Federico Hidalgo a fait tourner les têtes à Sundance cette semaine avec A Silent Love, un charmant premier long métrage sur fond d’épousailles interculturelles.

Le Montréalais Federico Hidalgo arborait, lors de notre rencontre au festival de Sundance, en début de semaine, le sourire un peu las de ceux qui sont assiégés par les émotions. Bien que positives, celles-ci semblaient avoir hypothéqué son sommeil au même titre que les autres.

La cause de cette anxiété heureuse a pour titre A Silent Love, premier long métrage d’Hidalgo, qui se dit encore tout surpris d’avoir été invité à participer à la grand-messe de Robert Redford. Rencontré à la Sundance House, située au centre-ville de Park City, le cinéaste semblait encore plus étonné de voir que sa délicate comédie dramatique, tournée avec plus de coeur que d’argent, plus d’honnêteté que de style, a suscité les applaudissements nourris du public et fait s’emballer la machine à rumeurs.

Produit par Pascal Maeder (Motel) chez Atopia, A Silent Love (qu’on verra vraisemblablement sur nos écrans à l’automne) se promène entre Montréal et Toluca, au Mexique. C’est dans ce lieu que Norman (Noel Burton), un professeur de cinéma quinquagénaire de Montréal, est venu chercher Gladys (Vanessa Bauche, découverte dans Amores perros), la jeune enseignante qui, par le truchement d’Internet, a répondu oui à sa demande en mariage. Or, lorsque la conversion du virtuel au matériel sème le doute dans l’esprit de la jeune femme, celle-ci pose une condition à leur union: que sa mère Fernanda (formidable Susana Salazar) soit du voyage. Au fil des mois qui passent, le grand appartement de Norman, dans le Mile-End montréalais, devient le théâtre d’une idylle muette, chaste et quasi invisible (tant les signes qui la trahissent sont subtilement retenus) entre lui-même et sa belle-mère, à l’insu bien sûr de la nouvelle épouse, accaparée par son apprentissage de la langue.

Un univers cosmopolite

Lui-même professeur d’anglais langue seconde à l’éducation permanente de l’université McGill, Federico Hidalgo a voulu, à travers A Silent Love, illustrer l’éveil de Norman qui, pendant que son épouse apprend l’anglais et le français, apprend lui-même l’espagnol afin (peut-être) de pouvoir ouvrir son coeur à sa belle-mère. «L’apprentissage d’une langue est quelque chose de très émouvant pour moi», m’explique dans un excellent français cet Argentin de naissance passé par le Nouveau-Brunswick et l’Ontario avant de venir prendre racine à Montréal, au début des années 80. «En apprenant une autre langue, Norman parvient à exprimer des émotions qui étaient enfouies en lui. C’était ma façon de présenter le reflet inversé de la situation de son épouse, laquelle, en apprenant la langue du pays, se voit obligée à faire face à certains obstacles d’expression.»

Marié à Paulina Robles, une Mexicaine également coscénariste du film -- et qu’il n’a pas rencontrée par Internet, s’empresse-t-il d’ajouter --, Federico Hidalgo tenait d’une part à montrer Montréal comme un univers cosmopolite et ouvert, à en pénétrer les pores du tissu social sans succomber au charme de la page touristique.

D’autre part, le cinéaste formé à l’université Concordia tenait à éviter le piège du reportage social sur le phénomène du mariage international. «Nous tenions avant tout à aborder le thème de la rencontre interculturelle et à examiner, au delà des différences, les similitudes entre les deux pays. Nous voulions illustrer, par exemple, la souffrance liée à la solitude, commune à chacun des personnages.»

En cours de recherche, Hidalgo et Robles se sont aperçus que les Sud-Américaines qui faisaient appel à des réseaux de rencontre ne correspondaient pas à l’image tiers-mondiste qu’on s’en fait. «Au contraire, on s’est aperçu que beaucoup de ces femmes avaient une vie, une carrière et une réalité plus complexes, au-delà desquelles la curiosité et d’autres variables pouvaient les pousser à chercher un mari à l’étranger.»

Sans pouvoir dire si Norman est l’incarnation du Montréalais moyen, Federico Hidalgo reconnaît dans ce personnage la mélancolie et le besoin d’amour de plusieurs hommes qu’il a fréquentés au fil des ans. Afin de l’ancrer plus profondément dans la réalité montréalaise, les deux scénaristes ont dessiné quelques personnages secondaires (dont un collègue de Norman, joué par Maka Kotto), lesquels viennent infléchir les destins des membres de ce triangle amoureux et poser un regard étonné, amusé ou même sévère sur l’union de Norman et Gladys.

Petit film imparfait mais modeste, intelligent et patient, A Silent Love est un petit drame teinté d’humour sous un voile d’apparences et de demi-vérités, dans lequel bouillonne toute une marmite d’émotions et de questions très personnelles au cinéaste et à son épouse. «Nous nous sommes analysés, en tant que couple, afin de chercher des détails et des observations qui pourraient donner de la texture aux personnages. Nous avons vécu de près ou de loin beaucoup des situations et des émotions illustrées dans le film. A Silent Love est porteur d’espoirs très personnels.»