Review No.128: Bonsai

Occasionally I feel that some films are just too arty for their own good, don't get me wrong I'm a fan of a good art film however I find that some directors think it's good enough to have their characters wistfully stare at each other while talking about important works of literature. Unfoturnately that's the case with Cristián Jiménez's Bonsai which is essentially about a man who lies about the books he's read, or later on those he's writing, in order to get very attractive women to sleep with him. The Man in question is Diego Noguera's Julio who tells us that he will end up alone while his pretty literature student classmate Emilia will end up dead, yes I know it's a cheery start. The young Julio feels inadequate as he is seemingly the only person in his class not to have read any Proust so endeavours to do so however unfortunately the man's work is presented as just too boring for our protagonist so instead he lies to Emilia, says he's read it and then they end up in bed together. Jiménez then takes us eight years into the future where a now-beardy Julio is attempting to secure the job of typing up the work of a famous author who notoriously only works with a pen and paper however he is turned down in favour of a cheaper option. Julio once again starts lying, this time to  his pretty neighbour, reciting to her parts of the book which are in fact his own words with this new story he creates being based on his experiences with Emilia. The film then takes us back and forth following Julio and Emilia's relationship which is tested by her flat-mate Barbara while in the present he struggles to keep up the lie and eventually he takes up looking after bonsai trees which form a part of his new story.

It's sometimes hard exactly to sum up what I thought of a film and I'm finding it really difficult to really put across my feelings about Bonsai. There's nothing particularly wrong with the film, it's well made and on the whole well-acted with Gabriela Arancibia being the stand-out as the awkward Barbara. The main problem with the film is the overall sense of self-satisfaction as these literary types try to convince one another that they're more cultured than they actually are. Our lead for example lies throughout the film to get what he wants and succeeds for the most part if not ultimately getting what he wants more surprisingly the women around him just fall for his charms. Though I felt the film did pick up in its second half there were long sections which were just fairly dull and parts in which Jiménez believed he was being comical when in fact he was the only that got the joke. There seemed to be a whole lot of bare flesh on display which I didn't felt was relevant to the plot, though I didn't mind when it popped, so again it felt as if the director was trying to include as much nudity as possible in order to make the film seem artistic. Bonsai has some interesting ideas about why we feel must lie and how far can we take our deception but at the end of the day these themes are dealt with in  a satisfying way and as you guessed ultimately this film is just far too arty for its own good.

Verdict: Well-made and well-acted but with nothing under the surface Bonsai suffers from being overly arty and not having as much to say as it feels it does so for that reason it gets a 5/10