La danza de la realidad
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Writer: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Cast: Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovits, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bastián Bodenhöfer, Adan Jodorowsky, Axel Jodorowsky, Andres Cox
Part of: /slash Filmfestival
[Review by cornholio.]

Plot:
La danza de la realidad is a surreal autobiographical film that connects Alejandro Jodorowsky’s own biography with politics and poetry.
Young Alejandro (Jeremias Herskovits) grows up with his parents Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky) and Sara (Pamela Flores) in a small village. They have a small shop there but they are not really included into the community. Alejandro is not particularly happy and neither are Sara and Jaime.

La danza de la realidad is a hard film to review. It is weird and it has many strengths, but it is an exhausting film and I felt that I couldn’t really do it much justice since it was programmed on the last weekend of the festival in the middle of a seven film day and I was already pretty dead.

[Slight SPOILERS]

There are many things that I loved about the movie. There was the fact that Sara didn’t talk – she only sang, opera-style, all her dialogue. That was wonderfully absurd and at the same time funny and touching.

There is also an incredibly bonding-moment between Sara and Alejandro: Alejandro is afraid of the dark, so Sara paints him and herself completely black, telling him that he is a part of the dark now – so there is nothing to be scared of. It was at the same time visually stunning and evoked incredible emotions. There generally were many great visuals

But there also were a couple of things I could have done without: There was a bit of peeing that had me cringing (when Sara pees on Jaime). And Sara seemed to spend half of her time topless, which wasn’t as bad since at least the men were getting naked, too, but it is kind of weird when you think about the fact that Sara is the movie’s representation of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mother. That was a bit to Freudian for my taste. Though I would like to have seen more of Alejandro and Sara and a little less of Jaime.

The film also had some lengths, especially since it makes you work for it and, as I said, by then I was too exhausted to work for a film anymore. But it would be worth it to give the film another try.

Summarizing: Very interesting.