Bonsai

Bonsai, directed by Cristian Jiminez, is a 2011 film from Chile. It's intermittently interesting, but mostly one of those films that play in college towns and is heavily involved in metaphor, this time a bonsai tree.

Diego Noguera plays a college student who meets the kind of girl that every college guy wants--she has that rock and roll look, and a kind of "fuck it all" attitude. She's played by Natalia Galgani, and I know if I was in college I would have worshiped her, but she would have spurned me. She doesn't spurn Noguera, though, and they have a relationship that starts when they both lie about having read Proust.

We jump forward eight years. Noguera is now having a friends with benefits relationship with his neighbor. He is a struggling writer, and is up for a job as typist for a famous novelist. The novelist tells him the idea of the book--a man hears on the radio that his ex has died. Noguera doesn't get the job, but he decides to write the book on his own, telling his friend that it's the novelist's book. He's using his history with Galgani as the source, and we hop back and forth and watch their relationship dissolve.

This is based on a novel, and it shows. It seems like something Saul Bellow might have written. I liked it, mostly, but even at only 95 minutes drags a bit. Part of the problem is that the main character is a sad sack who is entirely passive. He's like a cipher, walking through the film like an out of focus blob.

Bonsai did make me laugh a few times. I loved when the professor asked the class who had read Proust, and everyone's hand slowly goes up, so as to be not the only one who hasn't. Noguera then starts to read Proust, lying on the beach, the book open on his chest, giving him an interestingly shaped suntan. Later Galgani is at a party and complains that she's drinking a lot but can't get drunk. It is pointed out that she has been drinking non-alcoholic beer.

The film could have used more moments like this. The opening scenes remove any spoilers: Nogeura will live, Galgani will die. This kind of artistic decision is a bold one, but rather dumb, in my opinion. The ending of a movie should be inevitable but unpredictable. I guess the unpredictability is how she will die, which I won't say.