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From this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, comes The Party’s Over (Spanish: Se acabó la fiesta).This movie has many variations on its title. I’ve also seen The Party Is Over, Party’s Over and Fin de Fiesta, but I’m going with what appeared in the opening credits. A young Senegalese migrant makes the dangerous crossing by boat from Morocco to Spain. Fleeing the police and desperately thirsty, Bilal ends up in the compound of a wealthy woman of leisure, Carmina.
At first compassion, and the fear that Bilal will be arrested if they were found by the police, seem to guide Carmina in hiding Bilal in the shed. But soon we find that Carmina has the derangement of being rich (not to mention also a drinking problem). A third character, Lupe, Carmina’s cleaning person, works at the house daily, unaware of Bilal’s presence. Her family has worked for Carmina’s in some capacity for years.
Sonia Barba gives a great performance as Carmina and she has a great face. Nice on the surface but with a glint in her eye and wry smile that make you just slightly uneasy. Bilal is innocent but aware of the danger Carmina poses. They communicate in a mixture of French and Spanish. Bilal has a secret that seems fairly obvious to everyone except the characters in the movie.
The audience has a lot of knowledge that the characters don’t, but for whatever reason not much tension is built over the course of the story. It’s an interesting premise with surprises and twists, but it never created any sensation of danger for me. Maybe that reflects Carmina not being evil, but more poisoned by her own wealth into treating people like playthings. She does lock someone in a shed against their will and blocks them from contacting people though, so after some more thought I will classify her as evil.
There are moments where the film seems to deliberately resist tension, like the ending and the beginning where Carmina quickly loses her fear of the intruder in her home. That initial moment could be read as Carmina reaffirming the power that she holds over everyone. Bilal’s secret is so obvious. But it gets threatened midway in a very dramatic way, and then is finally revealed in a very dramatic way as well. Maybe the anti-tension is intentional.
It could be staged as a play. Three main characters all in one main location. There is a lack of reaction to some pretty crazy stuff happening that mirrors how we can watch people risk their lives to reach a better life and then not do much about it. If we are lucky enough, we can just sit in our compound like Carmina walled off from the pain and suffering outside. And once you seal yourself off against everything, might as well get very intoxicated, even though it is those who are struggling who are deserving of getting extremely intoxicated to numb their pain. But boredom must be numbed as well. What is worse, pain or boredom? Probably pain, but the two are inextricably linked, one might say.
Everything in the film is done well. The performances from all three main characters come across truthfully. I suppose it’s a social commentary comedy disguised as a thriller of some sort. I don’t know what to make of it.
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