La edad media

This is an astonishing film that overtly revives the overacting codes of slapstick comedy. Humorous gags go together with a desperate tonality: for Alejo, Luciana and the little Cleo actually live an endless quarantine, and their volcanic energy and richness of filmic ideas (and filmic references – above all, the one to Georges Meliès Le voyage dans la lune, 1902) are both a gesture of resistance and a cry for help. The fictional storyline makes us sink into Cleo’s perspective, a perfect occasion to perform a joyful escapism that speaks loudly of the hard conditions of real life. By the way, explicit auto-fictional dispositives are the best way to convey a documentary gaze… However, the assemblage of scenes around Cleo’s scheme – itself an ironic reflection on the translation of affective and monetary values – is definitely more than a series of sketches, insofar as we feel that La edad media revolves around a quite serious core: the dilemma between resistance and change in difficult times. What should be post-pandemic cinema? A defence of old values and skills or adventuring into new territories?