Utopias critique by differentiation, springing from a lack. They work, writes Lucy Sargisson, “by creating distant spaces whence to interrogate the now.”i But when the now is too hazy a target for interrogation, and the societal order too uncertain for judgment, what emerges is perhaps a space like the insular community of Dominga Sotomayor’s third film, Too Late to Die Young. While we join the Chilean commune in its fledgling stage, following the end of Pinochet’s rule and the reestablishment of democracy, Sotomayor’s characters barely hint at their country’s transitory politics. The film forgoes overt, verbalised politics in favour of an atmosphere, excluding even the name ‘Pinochet’ and yet evokes, through the commune, the restlessness of a country in waiting. Modelled after and filmed on location at the mountainous eco-compound in which Sotomayor underwent her own adolescence, the small group of artistically inclined inhabitants lounge, cheat on each other, and listlessly argue over practical decisions.ii What results is an unsteady bohemian haven whose strain seems to wear most on its young. In the case of 16-year-old Sofia, estrangement from the rest of the world is unpleasant, not alleviating. Her parents are divorced, and so Sofia lives with her too-silent father in the commune and pines for her mother in secret, though the latter lives in Santiago and is wholly occupied by a singing career. Immediate parental connection denied, Sofia finds comfort elsewhere. She turns to bruised melodies from Sinead O’Connor and Mazzy Star; to old cassettes featuring her mother and herself as a toddler, their overlapping voices much more tangible than Sofia’s fantasy of them living together again.
A world defined by its ease and perfection provides a dubious environment in which to be an adolescent, a period typically marked by discovering (and intensely feeling) life’s shortcomings. A utopia doesn’t easily lend itself to discussions of misery or hardship – to acknowledge such feelings implies the failure of a community created to dispel them. The film opens with the kind of images a nature-oriented commune might highlight in their brochure: a bounding dog against the background of a mountainous horizon; a gathering amid the bright green vegetation, Sofia and her friend Lucas lying sprawled and exuberant in the dirt, planning for the future. They’ll sleep outside after the upcoming New Year’s party; they’ll visit each other when one or both no longer live in the community. These sanguine predictions belong to a child’s sunny idea of how things work, where sexuality problematises nothing and parents are infallible. But the commune cannot purify its members, only their surroundings. In their attempts to regain intimacy with nature – no running water, farming sans electricity – the inhabitants of Sotomayor’s community seem to blame the trappings of modernity for life’s complications, forgetting that human beings, especially pubescent ones, carry complication with them.
Although the commune is peaceful, the spontaneous brushfires that plague the community and the sight of the protruding cityscape seem to say that avoidance is no real escape – from a decaying, unstable planet, from political unrest, or from disillusionment. This is a world which ignores and outsources problems – Sofia begins to mature out of it. A complicated young woman, she is uncomfortable in a place dedicated to simplicity. Sofia’s head dips in and out of the frame as she speaks to Lucas: in several moments he is left alone in the shot, looking up at a girl just out of reach. In other scenes she is similarly distant. A group of peers watches her from afar, unable to articulate what it is about her that draws their gaze. Her opaqueness allures the boys: she’s “hot” because she’s “special”. One palpably jealous girl makes a spectacle out of kissing the boys, attempting to use her nascent sexuality to gain the attention Sofia commands with her inherent sensuality. But Sofia’s maturity cannot be replicated with mature actions; like she tells her father assuredly, she doesn’t “smoke”, she’s a “smoker”. Nor can she be won over by ‘mature’ actions. Lucas tries to impress her with his brooding and drinking but fails. In the end, Sofia finds her first love in the older Ignacio. He wants to leave the commune too, and actually has a business plan (and a motorcycle). Lucas wants Sofia, who wants Ignacio, who in turn seems to prize only his freedom and mobility, his next ambition being to open a travel agency with a friend. Everybody gazes upwards. Both Lucas and Sofia are eventually disappointed, although Lucas does not transform like Sofia in the process.
Perhaps because Ignacio’s failure as an escape route compounds her mother’s failure to match her ideals, these breaches of trust leave Sofia jaded. The agony of unmet expectations hangs over her like the threat of fire in dry air – both ready to erupt at a moment’s notice. Release, be it self-destructive (compulsively scratching her own skin, having sex with someone who will inevitably disappear) or innocuous (listening to music that echoes her own melancholy), is urgent. One can imagine the unsustainable discomfort of harbouring emotions that aren’t meant to exist in the supposed harmony of such surroundings. Actor Demian Hernández’s portrayal of Sofia is complex and multi-layered – after filming, Hernández began to identify as a man.iii Hernández’s performance memorialises both his and Sofia’s last experiences of girlhood, and Sotormayor creates, with charged stares, scorched compositions, and disruptions both hormonal and elemental (no Eden is spared from primal force), a tender portrait of children deserting their fidelity to the optimism in which they can no longer believe.
i Lucy Sargisson, ‘Strange Places: Estrangement, Utopianism, and Intentional Communities’ Utopian Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, 2007, pp393–424. ii Christopher Small, ‘Spirit of Change: Dominga Sotomayor Talks ‘Too Late to Die Young’ on Notebook’. MUBI, 16 Aug. 2018. iii ibid
Bessie Rubinstein is a writer based in New York.
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