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A WEEK ALONE LOOKS AT UPPER-CLASS ISOLATION
04/09/2008
Celina Murga’s sophomore feature A Week Alone stirred up an interesting discussion after its public screening today. A polished, measured film, it tells the story of a group of upper-class children from a gated community left alone in the care of adolescent Maria (Magdalena Capobianco), while their parents go on holiday together.
They while away the days skipping school, snooping around the homes of their neighbours and lounging poolside, until the arrival of Maria’s maid’s brother Juan (Ignazio Gimenez) upsets their order. The class difference is enormous – Juan is from a poor Buenos Aires neighbourhood whereas the others live well outside the city center – and the rich kids don’t know what to make of him, instinctively keeping their distance and excluding him even from their activities.
Murga (director of the award-winning 2003 film Ana and the Others) was inspired by an article she read about generations of children, from Argentina and beyond, growing up within the confines of these gated communities. “These parents think they’re shielding their children from the chaotic world by raising them in this overprotective environment. But I think this makes them angry because they do not and cannot relate to the real world, which is very chaotic. And I think that in order to help them with their development and growth we need to give kids the tools to deal with the chaos.”
When casting, she and producer/co-screenwriter Juan Villegas said they went directly to these communities, less interested in professional actors than children who had a natural presence and knew these wealthy residential bubbles firsthand.
Their first impact with Gimenez reflected their characters’ reactions, said Murga. “These kinds of kids don’t see people in a human way, only through social class. So the first time they saw Juan it was like a scene from the film, they had a physical reaction [to him]. But as we started working together, spending all our time together, they became closer.” However, true to the social commentary that the director makes in her film, after the shoot wrapped, contact between him and the rest of his peers eventually died off.
Murga is currently working alongside Martin Scorsese as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
Natasha Senjanovic
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