Reviews: A Silent Love

Scott Foundas, Variety, Thursday, February 12, 2004 [7029]

A Silent Love

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.

Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle, Friday, December 10, 2004 [7065]

A Silent Love

A Mexican and Canadian production, A Silent Love puts an unusual spin on some of the clichés of the romantic comedy. A well-written script (by Patricia Robles and Argentinean newcomer Hidalgo), thoughtful direction, and sensitive performances by all the key players breathe fresh air into this culture-clash romance and help the movie break with the form’s overfamiliarity. We have seen movies before about mail-order brides, cultural collisions, and romantic triangles, but rarely are they handled and resolved with such deft originality. Norman (Burton) is a lonely, middle-aged professor of silent film in Montreal, who is matched through an Internet agency with Gladys (Bauche, best known for her work in Amores Perros), a beautiful, vibrant, and impulsive woman from Mexico. He flies to Mexico to meet Gladys and propose marriage and the start of a new life together in Montreal, but Gladys has one condition: Her mother Fernanda (Salazar) must come along. A kindly man, Norman agrees readily. Even though we know that a live-in mother-in-law means trouble for any beginning marriage, leads this trouble into a new direction. Also unusual is the character of Gladys, who is in search of love and a sense of destiny rather than a green card. She is not looking to escape her life in Mexico or gain wealth: All she wants is a loving husband. Although Norman and Gladys behave lovingly toward each other in Montreal, they slowly discover that this is not the same thing as love. As depicted here, Montreal must be the melting pot of the Americas as we see Norman’s African-born colleague and the sushi bar where Gladys seeks work develop into subplots. The whole theme of the importance of gestures to the understanding of silent film echoes as Gladys and Fernanda buzz away to each other in Spanish while Norman attentively watches. A Silent Love, which debuted at the 2004 Sundaance Film Fesival, subverts stereotypes with its gentle humor.

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter, Tuesday, November 16, 2004 [7062]

A Silent Love

NEW YORK -- A gentle comedy that thankfully avoids the many cliches in which it could have indulged, this Canadian feature is the sort of intelligent, understated, humanistic film that tends to get neglected in today’s marketplace.

Seen widely on the festival circuit and now receiving a theatrical engagement at New York’s Quad Cinema, “A Silent Love” will hopefully find a more discerning video audience.

The film depicts the consequences that result from the mail-order marriage between Norman (Noel Burton), a midde-aged film professor living in Montreal, and Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), the much younger Mexican woman with whom he’s been exchanging passionate letters on the Internet. Norman travels down to Mexico to pick up his bride, assured by the marriage broker that their relationship has a “61% chance of success.” But he encounters a hitch: The strong-willed Gladys insists that her widowed mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), come to live with them, a demand to which Norman good-naturedly agrees.

Once ensconced back in Canada, the couple discover that their relationship has its pitfalls in person. Besides the obvious age, class, ethnic and cultural issues, Gladys becomes jealous of the lingering presence of one of Norman’s ex-girlfriends, and he becomes increasingly attracted to the still beautiful and far more age-appropriate Fernanda.

Co-written by director Federico Hidalgo and his wife Paulina Robles, the screenplay contains more themes and subplots than it can comfortably handle. But it beautifully manages a blend of quiet comedy and poignant drama in its depiction of the way in which the two older characters gradually come to realize their mutual attraction even while being deeply fearful of its emotional consequences.

The largely unknown performers (Bauche did make a striking impression in “Amores Perros”) handle their complex characterizations with skill and sensitivity, including particularly luminous work by Salazar as the still vital mother-in-law.

Scott Foundas, LA Weekly, Wednesday, November 17, 2004 [7063]

A Silent Love (recommended!)

After last year’s excruciating Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton pairing, it comes as a refreshing surprise to see a film in which the attraction between a man and a woman of a certain age is engaged as the basis for something more than saggy-bottomed slapstick. Voilà: director Federico Hidalgo’s delightful three-hander, in which a lonely Montreal film professor (Noel Burton) meets and marries a much younger Mexican woman (Amores Perros star Vanessa Bauche) via an Internet matchmaking service, only to subsequently find himself falling for the woman’s widowed mother (Susana Salazar), who accompanies the couple back to Canada following their nuptials. One part farce, another part morality play, A Silent Love is most distinguished by the quiet dignity Hidalgo (who co-wrote the script with his wife, Paulina Robles) bestows upon his characters - they’re vibrant individuals with minds of their own, which is another way of saying that they only occasionally obey the dictates of Hollywood romantic-comedy convention. All three actors are more than up to the challenge, particularly the radiant Salazar, who feasts upon that rare gift of a role that allows an actress the wrong side of 40 to be funny, sexy and vital without apologizing.

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times, Friday, November 19, 2004 [7064]

Intercontinental Romantic Triangle

As its title quietly suggests, director Federico Hidalgo’s “A Silent Love” concerns itself with the unspoken aspects of a relationship. A cross-cultural romance about a middle-aged Canadian film professor, Norman (Noel Burton), who goes to Mexico to collect his Internet-acquired young bride, Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), and her mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), the film wastes no time in dropping the audience into their lives.

Once the trio arrive at Norman’s apartment in Montreal, however, Hidalgo is extremely patient in allowing the characters to circle one another as the longtime bachelor attempts to ease the strong-willed women into his neatly compartmentalized life. That’s easier said than done as Norman, who is expert at reading the gestures of a silent film for his students, is less adept at reading the nonverbal signs of the women.

Though it’s fairly obvious where this triangle is heading, Hidalgo and co-writer Paulina Robles more than compensate by focusing their attention on character rather than plot to tell their subtly enchanting story. Its charms sneak up on you because of the nuanced performances of Burton, Bauche and particularly Salazar as their characters discover that what people think they want and what ultimately makes them happy aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Stephen Holden, The New York Times, Friday, October 29, 2004 [7053]

Love, Marriage and a Mail-Order Bride

During its first half hour, “A Silent Love,” the story of a shy Canadian professor who weds a younger Mexican woman he has met online, looks as if it’s headed for the scrap heap of saccharine mail-order bride movies. But just when it seems about to settle into the formulaic tale of an apparent mismatch that turns into bliss after a thorny period of adjustment, the film makes the first of several sharp left turns.

After wooing his potential fiancée in a flowery correspondence, Norman (Noel Burton), a courtly, middle-aged professor of film in Montreal, travels to Mexico to meet her. Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), an attractive, strong-willed woman who lives with her widowed mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), agrees to the marriage on condition that her mother live with them in Montreal for the first few months.

An early sign that “A Silent Love” is not content to be a feel-good intercultural idyll comes during a dinner party when one of the guests, Molly (Paula Jean Hixon), a brash young Canadian, poses needling questions about the colonial implications of importing a marriage partner from a less affluent culture. Why couldn’t Norman have chosen one of the many available woman around him, she asks with some bitterness. Never answered, the question just sits there to be pondered for the rest of the movie. Her implication is that Norman wanted a dependent, submissive servant for a wife, not an equal.

The newlyweds’ physical chemistry never jells. And Gladys, insecure in a new culture, overreacts to the discovery of a snapshot of Norman with Joyce (Lisette Guertin), another teacher in the college and a former lover, who gives her the cold shoulder when they meet.

Meanwhile, Norman finds himself increasingly attracted to Fernanda, who has been gently, discreetly advising the couple when problems arise. Beautiful, poised and proudly self-contained, Fernanda returns Norman’s feelings, but is far too ethical to act on them.

As a film scholar, Norman’s passion is for silent movies. And “A Silent Love” quotes directly from Erich von Stroheim’s 1922 classic, “Foolish Wives,” to suggest that they channel the emotional fireworks Norman suppresses.

Ultimately, “A Silent Love” transcends its problem-play situation to ponder how the best laid plans for an arranged marriage are no match against the vicissitudes of passion in a romantically besotted culture, where, in the language of Sammy Cahn, “love and marriage go together like horse and carriage.” Notice that love comes first in that equation.

V.A. Musetto, New York Post, Friday, October 29, 2004 [7056]

A Silent Love

(2.5/4)

A film professor in Montreal marries a Mexican woman young enough to be his daughter, then falls for her more-age-appropriate mom in “A Silent Love.”

The feature debut of director/co-writer Federico Hidalgo starts as a low-key comedy as middle-aged Norman (Noel Burton) travels south of the border to claim 28-year-old Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), whom he met through the Internet. The matchmaker says the two have a 61 percent chance of being compatible, but changes his mind when Gladys insists that her widowed mom, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), accompany her to Montreal.

The story turns serious as Norman, back in Canada, finds himself more attracted to his mother-in-law than to his bride. The film also introduces several subplots that get in the way of the story. Still, “A Silent Love” manages to entertain while saying something about loneliness and culture shock.

Jason Bogdaneris, The L Magazine, Wednesday, October 27, 2004 [7058]

A Silent Love

Norman is a man of few words. A university professor in Montreal, his passion is the study of silent films. He explains that for modern viewers, they lack something essential, but for him, their eloquent language of gestures has been sadly, irretrievably lost. This simple idea --the limits of languaage as a communication device -- is at the heart of A Silent Love, a bittersweet would-be romance.

Hoping to escape a gentle, quietly-mannered life pervaded by loneliness, Norman travels to Meixco to meet a bride advertised on the internet (Vanessa Bauche of Amores Perros). After a brief, painfully awkward courtship she agrees to return with him to Montreal. But there’s a catch. She asks that her widowed mother be allowed to live with them. It’s at this point that the film could go one of several ways. Farce. Melodrama. Sex romp. Instead it chooses its own path, giving us a realistic, touching and at times very funny look at this emotional ménage a trois.

What follows are some great scenes of mutual misunderstanding -- Norman and his new bride Gladys listening to their respective language tapes in the same room for instance. Gradually though, Norman spends less time with his temperamental new wife and becomes increasingly drawn to her grieving mother. It’s a tribute to the characterizations that as Norman’s feelings towards the two women shift, our views shift with him. The film lets things happen at a natural pace and the acting trio at the center of the film play well off each other. Those looking for a tidy resolution will be disappointed, and the film definitely meanders at times to the point of distraction. It veers off into subplots that at times detract from the emotional intensity of the main conflict, but the bi-cultural world view it affords is a welcome respite from Hollywood fluff.

Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide, Friday, October 29, 2004 [7060]

More than words can say

(2.5/5)

Behind the stilted title and sex-farce setup - an aloof, middle-aged Canadian marries a much younger Mexican mail-order bride, who comes complete with an attractive widowed mother - lies a cool, unpredictable comedy of mismatched desires. Lonely and deeply wounded by a failed relationship with a married colleague (Lisette Guertin), shy Montreal academic Norman Green (Noel Burton), a film professor, turns to an Internet marriage broker, who matches him with Gladys (Vanessa Bauche), a schoolteacher in her 20s who’s stifled by the limited horizons visible from her small-town home and disillusioned by the faithlessness and machismo of Mexican men. After a year of correspondence, Norman visits Mexico so he and Gladys can meet face-to-face. Though the encounter is brief and awkward, he proposes; the broker assures them that computer models give their marriage a 61 percent chance of success - not bad odds in this day and age. That is, however, before Gladys persuades Norman to let her bring her mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), a self-sufficient entrepreneur as seductively mature and confident as her daughter is indecisive and childish, to Montreal for an open-ended visit. Even as the newlyweds master each other’s languages and Gladys begins adjusting to Canadian ways and mores, it becomes apparent that mutual good intentions aren’t bridging the cultural differences and generation gap that divide them. But the real obstacle to their relationship - which Gladys fails to notice, in part because she’s busy obsessing about Norman’s ex-girlfriend - is that her new husband is falling in love with her mother. The lonely and clear-eyed Fernanda, by contrast, sees exactly what’s simmering behind Norman’s Anglo-Saxon reserve. First-time feature writer-director Hidalgo and cowriter Paulina Robles paint Norman, Fernanda and Gladys in broad, familiar strokes - uptight WASP, lonely widow, warm and restless young Latina - but Burton, Salazar and Bauche fill in details that make them feel awkwardly real; even when they behave badly, they’re not antic stereotypes. The film itself is uneven and stuffed to the gills with subplots, including Gladys’ efforts to match up Norman’s best friend, Andre (Maka Kotto), with her best friend back home (Regina Orozco), and an underdeveloped story thread involving Gladys’ black-sheep brother, Severino. But Robles and Hidalgo ring enough changes on a stock situation that you’re never sure where it’s going, and that alone is no mean achievement in a genre as formulaic and enervated as romantic comedy.

Kent Turner, Film-Forward.com, Friday, October 29, 2004 [7061]

A Silent Love

(3/5)

50-year old Canadian Norman Green (Noel Burton) arrives in a provincial Mexican city to finally meet his Internet-order bride Gladys, an attractive 28-year-old teacher. He haltingly speaks Spanish (but does have Mexican masks on the wall of his well-furnished home), and she knows only a little English. After their awkward introduction, Gladys makes a counter offer: She’ll marry Norman, but her mother must accompany her to Montreal.

It will be less a cultural and more a generational gap that will delineate this “First World Prince” and Gladys (played by Vanessa Bauche, the young wife in Amores Perros). Aloof and haughty, he scolds her like a parent when she embarrasses him in front of her mother, and she’s not as docile as she may first appear. Although the plot may be predictable, the characters are thankfully complicated. The actors wisely take their time, accompanied by a score that’s a cross between zydeco and mariachi. The title is, however, misleading, calling to mind a movie of the week. It was made for TV - in Canada. But performed with subtlety and offering no pat resolutions, the charming A Silent Love is a better than average film, in theaters or on TV.

Harry Haun, Film Journal International, Wednesday, October 20, 2004 [7052]

A Silent Love

Montreal is a city of two languages. Unfortunately, Spanish is not one of them, and therein hangs A Silent Love, twisting with awkward pauses and precious little dialogue.

This is what comes of wife-rummaging on the Internet, a 21st-century throwback to the mail-order-bride plot device of old. Director Federico Hidalgo and wife Paulina Robles have concocted a nearly mute little screenplay that is more mimed than verbalized. In time, over time, it rises to tentatively bilingual. Ironically, their spare script has won two festival prizes; count this as reflected glory for the three leads who make the story felt.

Norman Green (Noël Burton) is a middle-aged Montreal college professor who treks to Mexico, flowers in hand, to propose to the much-younger Gladys (Amores Perros’ Vanessa Bauche), whom he wooed with poetic e-mail. She says yes-provided her widowed mother (Susana Salazar) can come along, too. He agrees, and the website matchmaker throws up his hands in dismay, rescinding his “61% chance of success.”

As if the situation weren’t enough to tip the scales, the casting director has provided us with an elegant-looking mother-in-law who seems far more substantial and compelling than her daughter. She is also closer in age to the husband and generally more simpatico with him. Initially, he looks professorially disheveled and uninteresting, much like John Wood on a good day; then, she styles his hair after a Rod LaRoque picture she finds in a book and-voila!-turns him into William Holden. He, in turn, provides her a tropical plant for her room so she won’t miss Mexico, but it keeps falling over. At the first shiver of the Canadian winter, she bolts back below the border, leaving the newlyweds to their stagnating marriage and the petty misunderstandings that spring up from the gap in ages.

It’s not every man who comes to the conclusion that he loves his mother-in-law more than his own wife-enough to divorce the latter, marry the former and take it from the top again-but it’s not unprecedented (one example: Republic’s westerner, Rod Cameron). Hidalgo scales this obstacle with surprising grace and ease, thanks to a skillfully constructed script and his three emotionally engaging stars, particularly the luminous Salazar, who pulls the audience over to her corner early on and never lets go of them.

What’s more, no words are wasted in the process. Ethnic and emotional barriers eliminate automatically the chitchat, the better to focus on a marriage going south. The title underscores the silence. And, too, the newbie husband teaches silent film, which permits Hidalgo a chance to sprinkle his film with some Keaton and von Stroheim here and there.

Katherine Monk, The Calgary Herald, Friday, October 8, 2004 [7049]

A Silent Love a pleasant surprise

**** out of five

A Silent Love is as much a story about language as it is about romance, which gives it an intellectual sobriety usually lacking in a lovey-dovey movie - for both better and worse.

Better, because it brings a clarity to the issue of love and partnering. When you can’t get lost in your lover’s cooing tributes, you see him or her differently - as other - giving us perspective and therefore a better understanding of the romantic urge.

Worse, because that distance implies an impossibility of true union, a de facto denial of the very premise of romantic love.

If it all sounds a little hyper-intellectual, it’s supposed to. Our central romantic protagonist is a single, middleaged university professor.

Norman Green teaches at a Montreal university. Firmly lodged in middle age without a partner to share his life with, Norman uses an Internet service to find himself wife - in Mexico.

When the movie opens, Norman is bringing flowers to his would-be bride in a small Mexican village where his betrothed.com lives with her mother. The two women have a simple and comfortable life, but the young and beautiful daughter has an exploratory desire to see the world.

She wants more than the small cinder block house her mother calls home, and she sees Norman as a big, goofy white vehicle to get what she craves - a new life in North America.

Norman isn’t blind to the young woman’s wanderlust.

He’s also a very gentle person, which means we don’t have to worry about the inherent “creep” factor of a man who is so desperate for female companionship, he essentially buys it on eBay.

In the hands of first-time feature film director Federico Hidalgo, the story is stripped down to its essence until it’s finally a wordless meditation taking place within each character’s mind.

The real victory is the humour.

Hidalgo captures the awkwardness of every moment with such humanity, we’re free to laugh at the romantic missteps without pulling back from the drama.

More than anything, it’s believable, and that’s not only a function of the fantastically subtle and low-key performances from this unknown cast, but the script, penned by Hidalgo and his wife, Paulina Robles.

Tonya Zelinsky, Fast Forward, Thursday, September 23, 2004 [7051]

A Silent Love

Reviewed at the Calgary International Film Festival

Sometimes the most poignant form of communication can be silence. In Federico Hidalgo's A Silent Love, that statement rings true when three lives are turned upside down in a quest for love and the inability to express it in words. It's a simple, yet beautiful, story about two people seeking love and companionship, but confused about how to attain it. Norman (Noël Burton), a professor from Montreal, uses an Internet service to find Gladys (Vanessa Bouche), a schoolteacher from Mexico. They meet, marry and move to Montreal under one condition - Gladys's mother becomes the third wheel to their bicycle built for two. Hidalgo's portrayal of how the lives of these three lonely people evolve is certainly realistic. With a significant language barrier, several exaggerated gestures and a variety of facial expressions, the newlyweds and in-law learn to understand each other by not only communicating with words, but with emotions. Hidalgo offers a snapshot of how we approach relationships today and our desperate attempt to find that thing we believe will make us whole.

John TD Keyes, My Telus Review, Friday, October 8, 2004 [7050]

A Silent Love

*** out of 4

The burdens weighing upon an international marriage arranged through an Internet dating agency seem so obvious that even an experienced screenwriter could be forgiven for lapsing into cliché. That’s what makes this debut feature by Montreal-based Federico Hidalgo so remarkable and touching. His dramedy about a lonely Montreal cinema-studies professor who seeks out and weds an impetuous Mexican elementary schoolteacher manages to steer clear of hackneyed situations and yet arrive at a conclusion that manages to be perfectly, messily unhappy.

Noel Burton delivers a brave performance as Norman, a middle-aged bachelor who packs his courage and his Berlitz-audiotape Spanish and flies off to meet the Mexican woman he intends to marry. Gladys (Vanessa Bauche, best known for her role in 2000’s Amores Perros) seems to be exactly what Norman was dreaming of. Their tentative attempts to communicate at their first meeting alternate between the comic and the excruciating, and both actors do all the right things to sell us on their characters’ hopes for the future. That future is complicated somewhat when Gladys cajoles Norman into letting her mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), accompany them to Canada. Their ménage a trois makes Norman’s spacious Montreal apartment start to feel claustrophobic, and everyone’s adjustment is made just that much more difficult than it might otherwise have been.

On the whole, though, life is OK.

The dialogue is in English, French and Spanish - both the women’s native tongue and Norman’s increasing fluency - and writer-director Hidalgo pulls off some very interesting scenarios with his subtitles, as the women speak about Norman in front of him (“He’s starting to understand us,” says one to the other), and then as Gladys, who’s attending ESL classes, starts to understand the people in Norman’s milieu at the college. Gladys turns out to be a jealous and temperamental woman, but she also has every right to feel adrift in her new world, and we can’t entirely blame her for her outbursts. Meanwhile, Fernanda’s calm influence becomes increasingly vital to maintaining harmony, and we can see why Norman might begin to view his mother-in-law in a new light.

The movie takes its time, and that feels right. There are serious issues at play here, and when the plot unfolds in unexpected directions, we’re seduced into following, even into dark and unhappy corners. As performers, Burton, Bauche and Salazar exhibit great chemistry together, usually in situations where one of the characters is out of sync with the other two, and that’s a nice bit of acting. It’s not often that adult ideas get the performance they deserve.

David Spaner, The Province, Friday, September 17, 2004 [7042]

Mexican Mom Steals Smart, Sensual Movie

Review
A Silent Love
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of four)

Warning: PG: Sexually suggestive scenes, coarse language.

In A Silent Love, a Mexican woman works in a Japanese restaurant in a French-English city.

Montreal is at its multicultural best in this sensual, smart movie from writer-director Federico Hidalgo, who grew up in Mexico and lives in Montreal.

“We speak two languages,” Anglophone film professor Norman (Noel Burton) says of the city. But there are four languages in A Silent Love. Along with French and English, there is Spanish and, most memorably, silence.

In the first notable use of cinematic computerized dating since You’ve Got Mail, Norman lands a bride from a Mexican town via the Internet. Gladys (Vanessa Bauche) is a 28-year-old school teacher who promises to “create a happy home for a happy man.”

When the middle-aged prof arrives on her doorstep, Gladys says she’ll marry him providing she can bring her mother Fernanda (Susana Salazar) with her to Montreal.

Apparently Norman’s e-mails were deep but he isn’t. Or, suggests Fernanda, he’s just quiet, saying little of substance in any of the movie’s languages. Soon we learn, though, that there is a method to his silence.

The film professor, you see, is fascinated with the physical nuances of old silent motion pictures. Though Gladys quickly distances herself from her silent partner (“I’m a lousy… secretive husband,” he confesses), inside old Norman there is a passionate Canadian Latin lover.

Hidalgo is an accomplished filmmaker with this first feature, the movie’s sensuality smouldering slowly until the payoff.

A Silent Love moves smoothly between a rustic rural Mexico and a charmingly shot urban Montreal. Not as charming, though, as the beautiful, intelligent mother (who looks about 10 years older than the daughter), played compellingly by Salazar. No wonder Norman can’t take his eyes off her.

Salazar/Fernanda is so much more interesting than Bauche/Gladys (and Burton/Norman) that she steals the show and everything else from the daughter.

Katherine Monk, Vancouver Sun, Friday, September 17, 2004 [7041]

A Silent Love Captures Reality Between the Lines

(****) 4 Stars

A Silent Love is as much a story about language as it is about romance, which gives it an intellectual sobriety usually lacking in a lovey-dovey movie - for both better and worse.

Better, because it brings a clarity to the issue of love and partnering. When you can’t get lost in your lover’s cooing tributes, you see him or her differently - as Other - giving us perspective and therefore a better understanding of the romantic urge.

Worse, because that distance implies an impossibility of true union, a de facto denial of the very premise of romantic love.

If it all sounds a little hyperintellectual, it’s supposed to. Our central romantic protagonist is a single, middle-aged university professor.

Norman Green teaches at a Montreal university. Firmly lodged in middle age without a partner to share his life with, Norman uses an Internet service to find himself a wife - in Mexico.

She wants more than the small cinder-block house her mother calls home, and she sees Norman as a big, goofy white vehicle to get what she craves - a new life in North America.

Norman isn’t blind to the young woman’s wanderlust. He’s also a very gentle person, which means we don’t have to worry about the inherent “creep” factor of a man who so desperate for female companionship, he essentially buys it on eBay.

Norman leaves a lot of room for his new bride to find her feet in her new city, and to make things easier on her, he offers to fly her mother to Montreal as well - but that’s when things get complicated.

Closer in age and attitude, Norman begins to see his mother-in-law in a different light, creating a cascade of problems for the newlyweds, but also the potential for genuine understanding, even an honest union.

In the hands of first-time feature film director Federico Hidalgo, the story is stripped down to its essence until it’s finally a wordless meditation taking place within each character’s mind.

The real victory is the humour. Hidalgo captures the awkwardness of every moment with such humanity, we’re free to laugh at the romantic missteps without pulling back from the drama or losing empathy for the characters.

More than anything, it’s believable, and that’s not only a function the subtle and lowkey performances, but the script. Smart, believable, funny and perfectly unique, A Silent Love is a quiet, and very pleasant surprise.

At Tinseltown.

Ken Eisner, The Georgia Straight, Thursday, September 16, 2004 [7040]

A Silent Love

Starring Susana Salazar, Vanessa Bauche, and Noel Burton. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

A rare coproduction between Canada and Mexico, A Silent Love recently won two best-screenplay awards at festivals in the United States, and it’s easy to see why: it may be the best-written Canadian film (English-language division) of the past five years.

The fact that it came from Quebec and two non-native English speakers (Mexico’s Paulina Robles and Argentina’s Federico Hidalgo, who also directed) carries a certain amount of irony, but it also suggests a growing maturity in this country’s development as a multicultural entity.

The story is simplicity itself. Aging university professor Norman Green (Noel Burton)--he teaches silent-film classes, hence the bland title--leaves Montreal for Mexico to meet the potential bride he’s been courting via poetic letters. His Internet find, a young schoolteacher called Gladys (Vanessa Bauche, familiar from Amores Perros), makes one stipulation about returning to Canada with him: they must bring her widowed mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar).

This turns out to be less of a burden than expected--or a different kind of conflict, anyway. Gladys is more of a firecracker than Norman is used to, and her mom’s quiet intelligence and patrician demeanour are better suited to Norman’s ways than anyone notices at first.

The way this potential triangle is handled is anything but simple, however. Hidalgo allows this fine cast a powerful range of colours within his carefully chosen frameworks. And look for clips from Buster Keaton and Erich von Stroheim films that enliven and comment on an already rich story.

Although Salazar steals the show with her gracefully controlled performance, it is Bauche’s character who goes through the most transformation. While the audience, like our Spanish-mangling Norman, begins to wonder if Gladys is a scheming opportunist, she keeps a disarmingly open heart, as do the rest in this unforgettably human, and quietly funny, tale of folly and rebirth.

Metro Toronto, Friday, September 24, 2004 [7048]

A despair to remember

A Silent Love

* * * 1/2

There was a time when a movie about two people in a doomed relationship presumed adultery and secrets; a desperate, furtive series of liaisons that begin with love and end with betrayal or tragedy.

Think Brief Encounter or An Affair To Remember - films full of wet-eyed close-ups and heaving strings gilding every embrace and tearful goodbye.

It’s a different world today. Federico Hidalgo’s A Silent Love is the descendant of those unhappy love stories, and the first clue to how much the world has changed begins with Norman (Noel Burton), a middle-aged film professor in his Montreal apartment preparing to catch a flight to meet Gladys, the pretty young Mexican woman (Vanessa Bauche from Amores Perros) he’s going to marry.

They made their introductions through a website, and while it’s obvious enough why lonely, awkward Norman has had a hard time meeting anyone, Gladys’ motivations seem far less clear.

She doesn’t particularly want Canadian citizenship, or Norman’s money - mostly, she’s just tired of feeling like a misfit in a Mexico City suburb, full of a longing for change that she can’t quite put into words.

Norman and Gladys never stand a chance, and that’s only partly because of Gladys’ mother Fernanda (Susana Salazar), who reluctantly agrees to come to Montreal to help her daughter get used to her new life. She’s beautiful and dignified, and Norman is immediately drawn to her.

Hidalgo’s film is small and well-observed, full of satisfying small moments that actually makes up for an ending that leaves all three points of the romantic triangle more stranded and alone than they were when the film began.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star, Friday, September 24, 2004 [7047]

A Silent Love

* * *

The perils of Internet romances and the friction caused by cultural divides unfold with grace, wisdom and a couple of twists in A Silent Love, the first feature by Federico Hidalgo, an Argentine filmmaker based in Montreal.

Shy Montreal film teacher Norman (Noel Burton) goes online to find himself a wife, and secures a likely bride in Mexican beauty Gladys (Amores Perros’ Vanessa Bauche). He’s about 20 years older than her, but he’s a decent enough chap and he seems eager to please - so much so, he’s willing to take along Gladys’ widowed mother Fernanda (Susana Salazar) to live with them in Canada.

Before long, they have relocated to Montreal, where despite best intentions, the match doesn’t go quite as planned. Gladys has trouble fitting in with Norman’s friends and routines, and Norman lacks the sensitivity needed to understand her plight. As a former girlfriend scolds him, “You’re so self-absorbed, and foolish.”

But Norman is not so dense as to be unaware of his growing affection for Fernanda, who is much closer to him in age and instincts than Gladys is. The potential for a rebound love, and for disaster if it all falls down, keeps the movie quietly burning. The performances are exceptional across the board.

The Internet and modern transportation have made it easier than ever to bring people together from remote lands, but the gaps caused by age, gender and cultural differences remain as large as ever.

Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun, Friday, September 24, 2004 [7046]

Languages of love

Stellar role of mother-in-law overshadows story of married couple

* * *

Canadian-based filmmakers have turned the cross-cultural marriage movie into a mini-genre. Federico Hidalgo’s A Silent Love is the latest example and it’s a good one.

Despite occasionally stumbling in his effort to make the plot as complex as the cultural milieu that he so richly evokes, co-writer and director Hidalgo has a unique bittersweet perspective on the issue of arranged marriages.

In the story, an English-language Montreal college professor (Noel Burton) goes to Mexico to collect the prospective bride (Vanessa Bauche) he found on the Internet.

After one year of exchanging letters, the two meet for the first time and decide to marry. They also arrange to bring the bride’s mother (Susana Salazar) along to live with them during the transition time. She is a widow whose husband committed suicide years before.

The realities of marriage turn out to be more challenging than anticipated, in part due to personality, in part to the cultural shock. He is an often selfish, silent loner (part of the reason for the title). He can even be a clumsy oaf. She is a gregarious but often churlish and childish partner. She obviously needs to grow up through life experience.

The two lovers also seem incapable of bridging their age gap, their emotional communication problems and their sense of aloneness even when living together.

Only their language skills evolve, he in Spanish, she in both English and French. Not incidentally, the film plays in all three languages, with English subtitles for the Spanish and, for more rare conversations, the French.

There will be other problems, too, as the presence of the mother changes the dynamic of the marriage in mildly surprising ways. As played by Salazar, this mother-in-law is no harpy cliche, but an intriguing and intelligent woman of real substance. While others act rashly around her, she takes care with each life decision, emerging as the film’s most sympathetic and full-blooded character.

That actually is a problem for the film. Burton and Bauche do not carry their characters through with such conviction, so our attention strays at times from the focus of the story, the married couple, and lands on Salazar.

Nevertheless, Hidalgo takes us on an interesting journey into the hearts and minds of people who uproot themselves and spin slightly out of control in a new milieu. That applies equally to Burton in Mexico and Bauche in Canada.

What comes out of the low-key, low-budget movie, which was shot on location in the two countries, are moments of truth. Some harsh, some sweet, all evocative. (SUN, JAM MOVIES)

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail, Friday, September 24, 2004 [7043]

A Silent Love

* * *

Filmed with economy and a subtle script by director Federico Hidalgo and his wife, Paulina Robles, A Silent Love reveals drama through low-key performances and a series of defining moments. Set in the world of Montreal’s multicultural mosaic and Internet matchmaking, it’s a bittersweet drama about a May-December marriage.

Norman (Noel Burton) is a middle-aged Canadian film professor who picks a young Mexican wife, Gladys (Vanessa Bauche, of Amores Perros) on a website. In the opening scenes, he arrives in Mexico to meet his would-be bride. The Mexican marriage agent makes the introduction, and promises the couple a “61-per-cent chance of success.” He withdraws the guarantee when it turns out Gladys wants to bring her youthful widowed mother, Fernanda (Susan Salazar) with her for a few months.

Why Norman went looking for love on the Web we don’t know, but Gladys has tangible reasons for wanting a foreign marriage: A school teacher with an education but no marriage prospects, she craves more to life than she can find in her backwater Mexican town.

She fell for Norman’s romantic letters which continue to inspire her even after meeting their stiff undemonstrative author. One indication of Norman’s failure at love is suggested by his passion for silent movies, which he can idealize more easily than films with dialogue.

Gladys proves an enthusiastic lover, but the gulf between the newlyweds grows. He’s suspicious that she may be just using him to gain citizenship.

He condescends to her in public and his intellectual friends, especially a well-meaning feminist colleague, are even worse. Gladys can handle the insults but she complains to her mother that she finds Norman remote and she prefers the company of his easygoing jazz musician friend André (Maka Kotto). Meanwhile, Norman, ever the foolish romantic, finds himself drawn to Gladys’s mature, elegant mother, Fernanda.

With the quibble that the conclusion is telegraphed too early on, A Silent Love steers clear of the emotionally obvious; it’s a film that’s funny without laughter and sad without tears.

Jason Anderson, EYE Magazine, Thursday, September 23, 2004 [7044]

A Silent Love

A marriage gets lost in translation when a Mexican internet-order bride starts a new life in Canada in this modestly charming romantic drama by Federico Hidalgo.

Vanessa Bauche (who played Gael García Bernal’s object of desire in Amores Perros) stars as Gladys, a schoolteacher who uses a website to attract a suitor from the north, though she seems motivated more by loneliness than the desire to emigrate. Her beauty attracts Norman (Noël Burton), a mild-mannered film professor from Montreal. When Norman comes a-courting in Mexico, they hit it off, at least until Gladys impulsively invites her widowed mother Fernanda (Susana Salazar) to accompany them to Canada. Disappointed by this development, the marriage broker attending their meeting tells Norman he must retract the “61 per cent probability of success” he had calculated for the couple.

Once in snowy Montreal, the trio copes with the unusual living arrangements. Norman’s Spanish improves to the point where he can almost understand the women’s arguments. Unsure of what she wants, Gladys becomes increasingly aloof. Meanwhile, Norman is drawn to Fernanda, a woman of great elegance who is clearly a better match for him than her obstinate daughter.

Hidalgo alludes to the domestic discord by including clips from two of Norman’s favourite silent films, Buster Keaton’s One Week and Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives. The director otherwise keeps matters straightforward, allowing time for plenty of earnest conversation and moments of gentle comedy. Inadvertently reinforcing the cliché that Latinos are more passionate than Anglo northerners, the characters of Gladys and Fernanda are far more compelling and complex than the dull, stilted prof and his Canadian friends. It is the women’s energy that drives A Silent Love, giving some much-needed gusto to a sometimes overly cautious story about cultural clashes and frustrated desires.

Brendan Kelly, The Gazette, Friday, September 10, 2004 [7037]

Montrealer Weds Mexican Bride

**** (4 Stars)

Assured performances, directing elevate cross-cultural tale of Internet matrimony

A Silent Love
Starring: Vanessa Bauche, Noel Burton, Susana Salazar Playing at: AMC. Parents’ guide: Adult subject matter, not for children.

In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, A Silent Love could easily have slipped into maudlin movie-of-the-week sentimentality. But first-time Montreal feature writer-director Federico Hidalgo shows remarkable assurance with this cross-cultural tale and he is given considerable help by a first-rate cast anchored by Mexican actresses Vanessa Bauche and Susana Salazar, and Montreal’s Noel Burton.

Burton plays Norman, a lonely middle-aged Montreal college professor who uses an Internet agency to find a bride in Mexico. The film, based on a screenplay by Hidalgo and his Mexican-born wife, Paulina Robles, opens with Norman meeting in Mexico with his fiancé, Gladys (Bauche). They decide to go ahead with the marriage, but Gladys insists on one condition - Norman must agree to let Gladys’s mother Fernanda (Salazar) come with them.

Before you can say Three’s Company, the unlikely trio are living together in Norman’s Montreal apartment and the marriage is starting to self-destruct before it’s really begun. The mother-in-law is clearly not the only complication here. Norman is, to put it mildly, not big on communication, and Gladys finds it much easier to speak with her mother. There are no shortage of moments where Norman looks on unhappily as the two Mexicans have heated discussions in Spanish, often about him.

One of the nice things Hidalgo does is leave room for silences and dramatic pauses. He’s not in a rush to tell the story and that’s a relief in a movie/TV world obsessed with filling every nano-second with loud talk and louder action. The drama also takes a surprising turn about halfway through when Norman finally starts to come out of his shell.

Burton’s Norman is a classic repressed Anglo and it’s a tribute to Burton’s skills that he makes this guy seem like a loser and someone worth rooting for. Bauche’s also good as the confused, pouting Gladys, but the real revelation here is Salazar, who makes what could’ve been a stock character (the dreaded mother-in-law) into the most intriguing person on screen.

Melora Koepke, Hour, Thursday, September 9, 2004 [7038]

All quiet on the Northern front

If Federico Hidalgo’s A Silent Love was a guest at the boring dinner party that was the WFF, it would be the person that came with someone else that nobody knew, who sits in the corner, talking quietly to one person at a time. Meanwhile, you dance with your friends and listen to the music loud, but when you finally get around to having a conversation with the unknown guest, you realize they were the most interesting person there: Not flashy or deliberately quirky or self-aggrandizing, and utterly pleasant to sit across from and listen to, even when bigger things are going on.

A Silent Love played last week at the WFF, and it opens this week at the AMC Forum and Quartier Latin, an auspicious follow-up to a festival screening in this city, at this time.

Montreal-based director Federico Hidalgo has slowly been building support for his film the old-fashioned way.

“I think the fact that it played at Sundance generated a lot of interest in the film, and then it played a bunch of festivals after Sundance,” he says. “It played at the Miami Latino International Film Festival and people really liked it there. It showed in the MoMA in New York, and curators and programmers and bookers seem to really like it, so I’m hoping it will be able to compete at the multiplex. So we’re opening it in three markets, in Canada, and in New York and L.A.”

There’s some universal appeal. Co-written by Hidalgo and his wife, Paulina Robles, it tells the story of Norman (Noël Burton), a quiet middle-aged teacher who meets Vanessa (Amores perros) Bauche’s character Gladys via the Web, a pretty young Mexican teacher he decides to marry and bring to Montreal. Gladys brings her mother, Fernanda (Susana Salazar), and the three of them live in Gordon’s Mile End walk-up with mixed results (hint: Norman seems better suited to his mother-in-law in the long run).

The story progresses completely at its own speed: There’s a quiet, totally confident pacing that’s unusual in small first features. Though this movie isn’t derivative, Hidalgo and Robles did have their inspirations.

“We were inspired by [famed Japanese film director Yasujiro] Ozu films from the 1950s,” says Hidalgo. “They’re often about families disintegrating, so we tried to do something that has a similar quality… though people laugh a lot, too. I think it was especially fun for Vanessa Bauche, who told me she really appreciated the chance to do something more comedic as an actor.

Though A Silent Love is in one sense an “ethnic” family dramedy, the tone is more melancholic and wry than explosive and zany à la Mambo Italiano or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Chances are, this film won’t be turned into a sitcom any time soon. How sweet it is for a film like this to give a viewer space to contemplate timing and dynamics between people!

“It’s an accessible film, on a topic that is interesting to a lot of people… people really respond to the women characters, they appreciate seeing Mexican women portrayed differently than they usually are portrayed,” says Hidalgo. “I’m from Argentina originally, and my co-writer, who is my wife, is from Mexico. The film is personal in the sense that it deals with situations we have both lived through to some extent… not Internet-brokered marriage per se, but marriages between people of different cultures. And we have seen so many stories of people getting into peculiar marriages, some of which work out and some of which don’t. There are a lot of issues that pertain to the immigrant and migrant experience… Gladys’s ambivalent desire for independence, and yet she also experiences the typical Latin-American nostalgia, so instead of thinking about mother and home, the actual mother is literally present in the film, [complicating] her new life.”

A Silent Love was filmed in Montreal and in Mexico. The Mexican cast is comprised of well-known Mexican actors, while up north, our city plays the starring role.

“We picked explicit parts of Montreal we were interested in. The city in our film is meant not to just be depicted as a picturesque place, but as a set of social circumstances and social possibilities that could be attractive to a young Mexican woman coming from a village where she feels trapped. For some reason, [Latin Americans] have this romantic ideal about Montreal more than other North American cities. They talk about it as a place with a fascinating and interesting sense of freedom, and a diversity that allows reinvention of self. You can’t reinvent yourself without some sacrifice of who you were before, but Montreal seems to offer that idea.”

Brendan Kelly, The Gazette, Tuesday, August 31, 2004 [7033]

World Film Festival: Many languages of Silent Love

Romance, confusion between Mexican, anglo Montrealer

Life was imitating art in a big way on the Montreal set of A Silent Love. The film, which had its Canadian premiere Sunday night at the World Film Festival, is a charming, funny look at the sort of cross-cultural confusion that naturally ensues when you put two Mexican women together in a Montreal apartment with a local anglo guy.

In a conversation Monday morning, fine Mexican actress Vanessa Bauche, who starred in the Oscar-nominated Mexican flick Amores perros, and seasoned Montreal actor Noel Burton were recalling with fondness the trilingual, multicultural madness on the Silent Love set two years ago.

The film, by writer-director Federico Hidalgo, an Argentineborn Montrealer, is in Spanish and English, with a little Québécois French thrown in for good measure. Burton plays Norman, a lonely, middle-aged Montreal college prof, who, with a little help from an Internet agency, finds and marries Gladys, a young Mexican woman portrayed by Bauche. He speaks broken Spanish, she speaks Spanish and somewhat-broken English and, because it’s Montreal, recently-elected Bloc Québécois MP (and actor) Maka Kotto adds to the language mix by contributing some French dialogue as a franco pal of Norman.

The blend of languages in the film was mirrored in the multilingual interaction on set.

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Burton said, “so I had to learn Spanish and Susana (Salazar, who plays Gladys’s mother, Fernanda) didn’t speak much English. So Vanessa and Susana would be speaking Spanish the whole time, and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. So that made it very easy for me to play the confusion.”

“That’s right, we made you crazy,” Bauche said with a laugh.

There are many scenes in the movie where Norman looks on in bemusement as Gladys and her mom hold rapid-fire conversations in Spanish in front of him, often talking about him as if he weren’t there. The film, which has its final World Film Festival screening tonight, is, in part, a look at this rather dysfunctional communication.

But A Silent Love, as the title implies, is also a love story, though not quite the love story you might imagine. Suffice it to say that Norman and Gladys’s married life back in Montreal doesn’t go too smoothly and their marital woes are not just due to the language barrier. When Norman went down to Mexico to hook up with Gladys, she had strong-armed him into letting her bring her widowed mother to live with them in Montreal and, not surprisingly, the presence of the mother-in-law complicates things considerably for everyone.

A Silent Love is already well traveled on the film-fest circuit. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and has since played the Guadalajara, Brooklyn, Miami Latin, and Los Angeles Latino film festivals. It also screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Bauche says Mexicans and Hispanic Americans “really appreciate that the Mexican women in the film are treated with respect and dignity.” Bauche appreciates having the chance “to play a bit of comedy,” in sharp contrast to her most famous role in the absolutely brutal, mostly harrowing Amores perros.

“Everyone also likes the rapport, the chemistry, between the characters,” Bauche said. “They feel that these characters are real. I loved the script because of the subtleties of the relationships. I like watching ordinary people struggling with their emotions.”

The script, which was penned by Hidalgo and his Mexicanborn wife Paulina Robles, is spot-on in its portrayal of Mexican culture, Bauche adds, something she doesn’t see in too many American movies.

“I hate to see those (movie) postcards of Mexico,” Bauche said. “Everything is either awful or beautiful. It’s always tequila and Spanish guitars.”

Bauche first hit the big screen back in 1992 with the film El Patrullero from maverick director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy, Repo Man), and has since become a popular film and TV star in Mexico thanks to films like La Ley de las mujeres and Piedras verdes. But it was Amores perros in 2000 that really brought Bauche to the attention of audiences and critics around the world. She memorably portrayed the browbeaten wife of a low-life thug in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s explosive look at love, betrayal and violence. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

Though Amores perros and Y tu mama tambien put Mexican cinema in the spotlight over the past couple of years, Bauche says the film biz remains a fragile industry in her homeland.

“Last year, we made 26 movies and the year before we made only 12 movies,” Bauche said. “I haven’t shot anything for two years because there’s nothing to do.”

A Silent Love screens tonight at 7 at Parisien 4 as part of the World Film Festival. It opens commercially in Montreal on Friday, Sept. 10.

Jim Holt, Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, January 22, 2004 [7032]

Montreal filmmaker Federico Hidalgo takes A Silent Love to Sundance festival

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.

Brendan Kelly, The Gazette, Monday, January 12, 2004 [7031]

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

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.”

Natalia Wysocka, Voir Montréal, Thursday, September 9, 2004 [7039]

Parle avec elle (et sa mère)

A Silent Love de Federico Hidalgo, ou comment exprimer en trois langues les non-dits de la passion… une charmante romance pour polyglottes.

Gladys (scintillante Vanessa Bauche) est Mexicaine. Fatiguée d’attendre qu’un prince charmant se manifeste, elle s’inscrit à un site de rencontre sur Internet. Un petit clic, et la voilà jumelée à Normand (parfait Noel Burton), un Canadien bougon vivant mal la solitude qui lui colle au corps. Re-clic de ce dernier et, quelque temps et plusieurs dollars plus tard, les deux âmes se rencontrent, convolent en justes noces à Montréal et se préparent à vivre le grand amour. Mais la réalité étant ce qu’elle est, la suite est drôlement plus compliquée que les démarches administratives… et le déclic entre les tourtereaux tarde à se produire.

“Pour le scénario, ma femme Paulina Robles et moi nous sommes tout d’abord inspirés de l’expérience de couples qui avaient fait appel à ce type d’agence, raconte le réalisateur Federico Hidalgo rencontré dans le cadre du FFM. Puis, nous avons lu diverses études américaines effectuées à ce sujet. Les résultats de nos investigations nous ont fortement surpris! On croit souvent injustement que les femmes faisant appel à de tels services vivent dans une pauvreté abjecte, alors qu’une grande partie d’entre elles ont une éducation et une carrière.” De découvertes en découvertes, le scénario de ce premier film a commencé à prendre forme, pour finalement se matérialiser et être présenté en grande première au Festival Sundance. “L’idée centrale est foncièrement humaniste. Au départ, le spectateur est confronté à deux cultures remplies de contrastes, mais il réalise très vite à quel point les trois personnages se ressemblent.” Oui, vous avez bien lu, trois. Car, comme dans toute histoire d’amour qui se respecte, la géométrie s’en mêle et transforme rapidement le duo en triangle. Mais si Normand se désintéresse de sa nouvelle épouse, ce n’est guère pour zyeuter les attributs d’une beauté locale. Indéniablement attiré par la culture mexicaine, c’est pour Fernanda (efficace Susana Salazar), l’exotique mère de sa promise, que son coeur se met à battre.

Mais comment exprimer ses émotions quand on peine à comprendre les paroles de l’autre? Le sentiment arrive-t-il alors à dépasser en force le pouvoir des mots? “Le titre va justement dans le sens de ce questionnement: si l’amour est silencieux, est-il aussi absent? Le thème de l’apprentissage des langues nous tient particulièrement à coeur, souligne Hidalgo. L’espagnol auquel on fait appel ne peut être qualifié d’ornemental. À la différence de certains films qui l’insèrent sporadiquement dans les dialogues afin de donner l’illusion d’être dans un pays étranger, nous l’utilisons à des fins dramatiques.” Trois langues, dont l’anglais et le français, se superposent donc les unes aux autres, formant autant de barrières entre les personnages. Mais bien qu’abordant des sujets à controverses, Silent Love ne fait pas figure de critique sociale. “On essaie de créer un espace de dialogue, sans pour autant apporter de conclusions morales. On pose beaucoup de questions, mais on ne donne pas de réponses.” C’est maintenant au spectateur qu’incombe la tâche de combler les silences…

Marc-André Lussier, La Presse, Sunday, August 29, 2004 [7034]

La Presse a vu au FFM: A Silent Love

Voici un peu l’envers de Comment conquérir l’Amérique en une nuit. Alors que le jeune haïtien Gégé se met en tête de bouffer sa part du gâteau en partant à la conquête d’une blonde dans le film de Dany Laferrière, le protagoniste de A Silent Love, un professeur montréalais qui recherche l’amour sur Internet (Noel Burton), décide plutôt de se rendre au Mexique afin d’aller chercher là-bas une épouse.

Federico Hidalgo, qui réalise ici son premier long métrage de fiction, fera ainsi écho au choc culturel qu’affrontera forcément la dulcinée, mais il s’attardera surtout à la part intime d’une liaison qui, dans les circonstances, prendra une tournure inattendue, le prof tombant amoureux de la mère de sa nouvelle conjointe. S’il est clair que le cinéaste n’a pas pu disposer de grands moyens, son film convainc quand même par ses élans de sincérité. Des prestations vibrantes de Vanessa Bauch et de Suzanna Salazar viennent de surcroît ponctuer un film qui se distingue notamment par une célébration de la diversité culturelle.

Martin Bilodeau, Le Devoir, Saturday, January 24, 2004 [7030]

Un Montréalais à la grand-messe de Robert Redford

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.»