slowboatmo Review of Las Acacias

Las Acacias (2011)

unrivaled,rare form of realism portrayed on screen

[7 October 2011]

The film "les acacias" has few dialogues, yet it has a mysterious power to rivet the audiences from the beginning to the end. One has to attribute its success to every one of its meticulously crafted shots that is full of meaning and significance. The audiences get to observe and to appreciate the boredom of the life of truck driver but are never bored themselves since it is precisely the kind of boredom that they can emphasize with. As the movie goes along, two new characters, the woman and her baby, are introduced. Yet their presence on the screen is so natural that we can no longer differentiate their lives from the truckdriver's. The director manages to capture the authenticity of human interaction so well that we are not even aware that we are watching a movie with fictitious plot and characters. We feel that we are observing real life unfolding at every moment of the film, which we savor eagerly as we know that it will slip away both for us and the characters in the film. At the end, we can't help but shed a few tears for the brutal separation that will keep the three anonymous strangers apart forever. For me, the movie "les acacias" is one of the most realistic, touching films that I have seen. The height of realism it has achieved, combined with the depth of its meaning make it a film that is not easily surpassed by most modern films of this genre.