Baan – first-look review

Excuse the cliché, but for most roman­tics, the notion of ​‘home’ tends to be tied to a per­son – be it a lover, friend, fam­i­ly mem­ber – rather than a place. This state­ment rings par­tic­u­lar­ly true for the curly-haired pro­tag­o­nist of Leonor Teles’s Baan. L (Car­oli­na Mira­ga­ia) is a young archi­tect liv­ing and work­ing in Lis­bon, whose recent breakup with an unnamed ex caus­es the world to shift beneath her feet. Drift­ing aim­less­ly from one off licence to the next to source cig­a­rettes and alco­hol, she finds ran­dom par­ties to attend on her own with the sole pur­pose of get­ting black out wasted.

Teles, whose short film Batrachian’s Bal­lad won the Gold­en Bear at the Berli­nale in 2016, takes all but a straight­for­ward path to plunge her view­ers into the depths of her protagonist’s emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. A chance, trans­for­ma­tive encounter out­side an ice cream shop brings K (Megh­na Lall) into L’s life, a young woman of Thai her­itage who was brought up in Cana­da and has been float­ing from one city to the next – Toron­to, Lon­don, Lis­bon – hop­ing that she finds her­self in the city that will final­ly click into place and bring that much sought-after sigh of relief, a sub­mis­sion to belong­ing: ​“I’m home”.

Under­cut­ting Teles’s elec­tri­fy­ing visu­al lan­guage and styl­ish cin­e­matog­ra­phy is a sub­tle polit­i­cal urgency main­ly con­cern­ing the pri­ma­ry site in which the film takes place. By now, Lis­bon has famous­ly become one of the most promi­nent ​“dig­i­tal nomad” hubs in Europe. For­eign entre­pre­neurs and work­ers (who are rel­a­tive­ly well off) have tak­en advan­tage of the pan­dem­ic-spurred rise in remote work­ing to seek out new expe­ri­ences abroad, and for gov­ern­ments, this could only mean one thing: ​“Ker-ching”!

The Por­tuguese state was quick to dec­o­rate their cap­i­tal city’s wel­come mat with tax breaks, ded­i­cat­ed visas, the promise of rel­a­tive­ly cheap cost of liv­ing, sun­shine and a ​“bohemi­an lifestyle”. These work­ers enjoy salaries sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than those of the local pop­u­la­tion, and have formed an eco­nom­ic mus­cle that has caused hous­ing prices to soar. 

Teles treads care­ful­ly yet delib­er­ate­ly in depict­ing this phe­nom­e­non, as over­heard con­ver­sa­tions amongst the Sil­i­con Val­ley bros L’s boss­es meet with are jux­ta­posed with the treat­ment faced by migrants from less eco­nom­i­cal­ly priv­i­leged back­grounds, work­ing jobs in hos­pi­tal­i­ty. These larg­er forces and the effects of glob­al (and racial) cap­i­tal­ism lurk in the back­ground as L and K reach for the impos­si­ble grasp of belonging.

We don’t spend long with K, but her pres­ence pro­vides Teles the cor­po­re­al bridge to attempt a blur­ring of lines between Lis­bon and Bangkok as urban sig­ni­fiers from these two alchem­i­cal­ly dis­parate cities begin to meld. Dynam­ic nee­dle­drops, high­ly kinet­ic sequences and still moments of repose coa­lesce as we begin to tra­verse the spa­tiotem­po­ral bound­ary between past and present, the effect of geo­graph­i­cal shift­ing evok­ing a Kauf­man-esque dreami­ness. Some clunky dia­logue choic­es slight­ly spoil this effect, but Teles demon­strates great con­fi­dence in craft­ing an art­ful, apt­ly dis­ori­ent­ing and deeply relat­able jour­ney through her protagonist’s emotions.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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