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SCREENSHOTS<br />
Cocote<br />
Directed by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, 2017,<br />
106 minutes<br />
In Cocote, the hybridity that is the essence of the <strong>Caribbean</strong><br />
condition is made manifest with unflinching formal daring<br />
and piercing thematic reach.<br />
At its simplest a narrative of<br />
revenge, Cocote opens out<br />
further into an often abstract<br />
reckoning not only with violence<br />
but also with religion,<br />
class and, corruption, told in<br />
a cinematic language that is a<br />
bracing attempt to create an<br />
Antillean aesthetic.<br />
At the centre of Cocote<br />
<strong>—</strong> the word, ominously, is<br />
Dominican Spanish for neck,<br />
specifically the neck as a body part that can be broken or<br />
severed <strong>—</strong> is Alberto, who, as played by Vicente Santos,<br />
is a beguiling mix of the muscular and the melancholic. A<br />
gardener to a wealthy family in Santo Domingo, Alberto<br />
returns to his own family’s village when a well-connected<br />
(thus officially untouchable) policeman murders his father<br />
over an unpaid debt. As an evangelical Christian, Alberto<br />
balks at the expectation of him participating in the death<br />
rituals, a syncretism of Roman Catholicism and West<br />
African belief practices. Spiritual conflict will not prove his<br />
greatest challenge, however: Alberto is bluntly told that,<br />
as the eldest son, he is also expected to avenge his father’s<br />
brutal killing.<br />
Nelson de los Santos Arias’s stylistic proclivities were<br />
previously on display in his<br />
first feature, Santa Teresa<br />
and Other Stories, a muscleflexing<br />
gloss on Chilean writer<br />
Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666.<br />
In Cocote he gives these tendencies<br />
full freedom <strong>—</strong> documentary-style<br />
ethnographic<br />
observation blends with<br />
conventional drama, colour<br />
with monochrome 35-mm cinematography,<br />
expansive fixedcamera<br />
takes with energetic<br />
hand-held ones, and a spectacularly climactic 360-degree<br />
shot, the visuals wrapped in an immersive and inventive<br />
sound design.<br />
Admittedly this isn’t all seamless (and it isn’t meant to be)<br />
<strong>—</strong> but it works, brilliantly. Cocote is deliriously innovative,<br />
palpably <strong>Caribbean</strong> cinema, by a filmmaker who has put us<br />
on notice of his considerable talents.<br />
For more information, visit luxbox.com/cocote<br />
34 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
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