The Heiress­es – first look review

Amid the sound and fury of a thou­sand and one ambi­tious cin­e­mat­ic epics, it’s refresh­ing to find a film as serene as The Heiress­es. Paraguayan film­mak­er Marce­lo Mar­ti­nes­si makes his fea­ture debut with a qui­et sto­ry, focus­ing on an age­ing artist who finds her life chang­ing com­plete­ly when her part­ner of many years is sent to prison for incur­ring debts. Chela’s a home­body by nature, hap­py to rely on the more gre­gar­i­ous Chiq­ui­ta, until she’s locked away and Chela is reluc­tant­ly pushed into the out­side world.

In order to earn a lit­tle mon­ey and take her mind off Chiquita’s incar­cer­a­tion, she begins a taxi ser­vice, shep­herd­ing her old­er sister’s wealthy friends around fol­low­ing their week­ly card games. The car she dri­ves is a rel­ic, gift­ed to her by her father, and although she’s had to sell off her home piece by piece in order to fund her partner’s legal coun­sel, she’s reluc­tant to part with her beloved auto­mo­bile. It grants her a new sense of free­dom as she makes her ten­ta­tive first steps out­side of the house, hint­ing at the ter­ri­fy­ing notion that any­thing is still pos­si­ble for her.

It makes a con­sid­er­able argu­ment for slow cin­e­ma, mean­der­ing along­side Chela as she con­tem­plates her sit­u­a­tion, and in focus­ing on an old­er female char­ac­ter in a same-sex rela­tion­ship, Mar­ti­nes­si shines a light on a com­mu­ni­ty rarely seen on our screens. It’s a qui­et char­ac­ter study per­formed with nuance by Ana Brun, who seems at once dis­tant and vul­ner­a­ble. The glassy indif­fer­ence of the wealthy con­trasts from an over­crowd­ed noisy prison, where friend­ships are cur­ren­cy, bought and sold for the price of a cigarette.

Mar­ti­nes­si shows great empa­thy and promise as a film­mak­er, trust­ing his audi­ence to infer much from a retrained script, and cap­tur­ing the minu­ti­ae of his subject’s life in beau­ti­ful detail, from how Chela likes her tea to be served to the melan­choly scenes where she watch­es wealthy women pick over the arte­facts she’s sell­ing in her home. There’s a pow­er­ful sense, as you watch the life Chela knows unrav­el, that she might go on to bet­ter things, embold­ened by a chance friend­ship, and keen to leave the past behind.