Meet the young direc­tor bring­ing Shake­speare into the 21^st century

Through his pre­vi­ous three films, Ros­alin­da, Vio­la and The Princess of France, Argentina’s Matías Piñeiro has estab­lished him­self as one of the most inven­tive and excit­ing trans­la­tors of Shake­speare to the screen. Fre­quent­ly com­pared to the likes of Eric Rohmer and Jacques Riv­ette, his talk­a­tive, real­i­ty-bend­ing, effer­ves­cent­ly post­mod­ern adap­ta­tions freely decon­struct, reimag­ine and trans­pose The Bard’s texts to the present day with­out any of the pre­ten­tious­ness or alien­at­ing intel­lec­tu­al­ism that cus­tom­ar­i­ly accom­pa­ny such exercises.

The three films men­tioned above each fol­low an expan­sive tra­jec­to­ry, open­ing up the­mat­i­cal­ly as they dis­tance them­selves from their source texts (‘As You Like It’, ​‘Twelfth Night’ and ​‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ respec­tive­ly). Piñeiro’s lat­est, Her­mia & Hele­na, which pre­miered at this year’s Locarno Film Fes­ti­val, con­tin­ues this trend, though the jump is sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater this time around. The film takes its inspi­ra­tion from ​‘A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream’, and the pro­tag­o­nists are still bohemi­an twen­tysome­things, they’re still for the most part girls, and they’re still played by Piñeiro’s loy­al and preter­nat­u­ral­ly age­less troupe of actors.

The most imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous depar­ture is the relo­ca­tion to New York City. Piñeiro’s pre­vi­ous films were set in Buenos Aires, but in his Shake­speare adap­ta­tions the speci­fici­ty of the loca­tion was pur­pose­ly de-empha­sised. Apart from its open­ing, Ros­alin­da was entire­ly set in an idyl­lic and semi-fan­tas­tic coun­try­side that func­tioned as the­atri­cal stage-cum-soci­etal micro­cosm. Both Vio­la and The Princess of France used urban set­tings, but to fore­ground the char­ac­ters’ emo­tion­al jour­neys the cityscape was kept large­ly anony­mous, an impres­sion rein­forced by DP Fer­nan­do Lockett’s inti­mate camera.

In Her­mia & Hele­na, how­ev­er, the loca­tion is cru­cial, and this is sig­nalled from the start. Fol­low­ing an open­ing mon­tage of flow­ers and cher­ry blos­soms – both a nod to Japan­ese actress Set­suko Hara, to whom the film is ded­i­cat­ed, and to Piñeiro’s favoured focus, the ephemer­al­i­ty of life – the sto­ry begins with a vir­tu­osic shot from atop a build­ing rem­i­nis­cent of both the open­ing of The Princess of France and of Coppola’s The Con­ver­sa­tion. The cam­era covert­ly tracks a char­ac­ter as he walks through Colum­bus Park before soar­ing back up to frame dis­tant sky­scrap­ers jut­ting out from the city’s sky­line. New York will assume the role of the for­est from ​‘A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream’, a place where Piñeiro’s hero­ine, Cami­la (Augusti­na Muñoz), los­es her­self in a whirl of roman­tic con­fu­sion and oppor­tu­ni­ty hav­ing trav­elled alone from Buenos Aires on a fel­low­ship to trans­late the play into English.

This tac­tic of phys­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ing Shakespeare’s text with­in the film is famil­iar from Her­mia & Helena’s pre­de­ces­sors, but oth­er­wise, this is Piñeiro’s loos­est adap­ta­tion to date. Ros­alin­da is the only one of his films to draw the major­i­ty of its scenes direct­ly from its cor­re­spond­ing play, with char­ac­ters rehears­ing seg­ments from all acts in rough­ly chrono­log­i­cal order. Vio­la lifts a sin­gle scene from Shake­speare, where­as The Princess of France bor­rows the end­ing from ​‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ as its start­ing point and explores its poten­tial con­se­quences in a con­tem­po­rary sce­nario that reimag­ines the tit­u­lar princess as three dif­fer­ent women. There are no such direct nar­ra­tive par­al­lels in Her­mia & Hele­na and, also unlike the oth­ers, the film doesn’t include any scenes of rehearsals, which Piñeiro had pre­vi­ous­ly used to exper­i­ment with the lyri­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties of mod­u­lat­ing Shakespeare’s lines through repetition.

It’s a pity that these scenes are absent, as they rep­re­sent an inno­v­a­tive way of get­ting around the tricky feat of inte­grat­ing Shakespeare’s prose into a present-day set­ting, as well as a force­ful demon­stra­tion of their last­ing trans­port­ing pow­er. Piñeiro acknowl­edges the omis­sion of these sig­na­ture scenes through a hilar­i­ous moment in which Cami­la gives Span­ish lessons and her pupil reads her trans­lat­ed vers­es aloud in bro­ken, tune­less Span­ish. It’s only in Camila’s imag­i­na­tion that the vers­es appear in their intend­ed form, whis­pered to her­self in voice-over and goad­ing her roman­tic fan­tasies, as when the inver­sion expressed in the lines ​“Apol­lo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; the dove pur­sues the grif­fin; the mild hind makes speed to catch the tiger” kin­dles unex­pect­ed desire for anoth­er girl.

Along with the rehearsals, anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic that has all but dis­ap­peared is the bal­let­ic cam­er­a­work, although this absence isn’t as keen­ly felt. Going for a more dis­tanced aes­thet­ic, Lock­ett and his co-cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Tom­my Davis (who subbed in for the few days Lock­ett was unavail­able) large­ly forego the for­mer­ly pre­dom­i­nant shal­low focus and fre­quent­ly use long shots, which had almost nev­er fea­tured in Piñeiro’s oth­er films, gen­er­at­ing an effec­tive and nar­ra­tive­ly con­se­quen­tial dynam­ic between char­ac­ter and set­ting. Land­scapes also play a promi­nent role for the first time, gor­geous­ly cap­tured to engen­der potent yet unob­tru­sive pathet­ic fallacies.

The film’s more ground­ed visu­al style reflects Piñeiro’s the­mat­ic pro­gres­sion. His work has often received com­par­i­son to the French New Wave because of his buoy­ant por­traits of youth­ful love and infi­deli­ty. Though still strong­ly iron­ic, the end of The Princess of France presents the first inti­ma­tion of the gen­uine emo­tion­al pain that can and, as youth­ful­ness dis­si­pates, increas­ing­ly does accom­pa­ny promis­cu­ity. This dimen­sion is fur­ther elab­o­rat­ed in Her­mia & Hele­na and Camila’s trip upstate to meet her father Horace (the first ​“adult” in Piñeiro’s Shake­speare­an uni­verse, played by the indie direc­tor Dan Sal­litt), whom she has nev­er met, brings into sharp per­spec­tive her own numer­ous dal­liances through­out the film. This dual­i­ty is implied by the film’s title, as Cami­la comes to incor­po­rate both the court­ed Her­mia and the anguished Hele­na, and Piñeiro injects her por­trait with a hith­er­to unfa­mil­iar but deeply affect­ing note of pathos. Are Piñeiro’s for­ev­er young final­ly grow­ing up?