Again Once Again

It’s trag­ic that Romi­na Paula isn’t a house­hold name out­side of her native Argenti­na, where she’s proven her­self an excit­ing cul­tur­al fig­ure in recent years. In addi­tion to writ­ing three nov­els (only one of which, ​‘August’ has been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish) and sev­er­al plays, Paula has starred in a num­ber of Argen­tine films includ­ing Mar­i­ano Llinás’ mono­lith­ic La Flor. Known for her hon­est self-reflex­iv­i­ty, it fol­lows that her tran­si­tion to film direct­ing, Again Once Again, has tak­en the form of a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal med­i­ta­tion on the dif­fi­cul­ties she faces as a woman enter­ing her forties.

Play­ing a thin­ly-veiled ver­sion of her­self, Paula escapes from her stale rela­tion­ship in Cór­do­ba to Buenos Aires with her actu­al moth­er, Mon­i­ca, and three-year-old son, Ramón, all of whom use their real names. Paula appears to be a won­der­ful moth­er, and the film’s most delight­ful scenes show her play­ing games with her adorable son. When Paula ques­tions her suit­abil­i­ty for moth­er­hood, it’s a reminder that no such ide­al can ever be realised – it’s tough at times for all women, which shouldn’t only not stop her tak­ing time to look after her­self, but active­ly encour­age her to do so.

It’s all too rare that the cam­era focus­es on a woman under­go­ing a mid-life cri­sis rather than her male part­ner, although recent films like Claire Denis’ Let the Sun­shine In have led the way. Rather than seek­ing some­thing new, as her film’s title sug­gests, Paula tries to relive her youth to fig­ure out what’s been miss­ing in her life for the last three years. Leav­ing Ramón with her moth­er, she can go out and dance again, drink again, smoke again – adopt a youth­ful dis­re­gard for her mor­tal­i­ty. Of course, it can’t go on for­ev­er, but it does allow her time to refo­cus and gain a clear­er sense of who she is.

The film suc­ceeds in its real­ism and raw hon­esty to show that our futures are inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to our pasts. When it seems Paula might be find­ing new love, she takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss her Ger­man her­itage which she nar­rates to us through a Kodachrome slideshow. It’s a shame then that these beau­ti­ful snap­shots of life are jarred by a set of mono­logues placed between scenes, deliv­ered by the var­i­ous fig­ures in Paula’s life. Stat­ing their feel­ings direct­ly into the cam­era under­mines the narrative’s sub­tle­ty and the nat­u­ral­ism of read­ing ges­tures for what goes unsaid.

Per­haps it’s Paula’s expe­ri­ence as an author per­co­lat­ing into the screen­play, wrestling with words and images as the great­est means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. So pow­er­ful is her visu­al sto­ry­telling that it should have been left to speak for itself: show, don’t tell. No doubt that’s some­thing that will come through more strong­ly in future films, – but make no mis­take, Paula’s debut is an extreme­ly assured rumi­na­tion on female experience.

In the film’s clos­ing moments, Paula walks along an emp­ty train track between trees, our view aligned behind her head before she looks back and smiles. An obvi­ous metaphor, maybe, but a beau­ti­ful one.

Again Once Again is avail­able on MUBI from 29 July.