The Heiress­es

When it pre­miered at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val ear­li­er in 2018, a qui­et buzz enveloped Marce­lo Martinessi’s debut fea­ture, The Heiress­es. This seems fit­ting, giv­en that every­thing about the film is sim­i­lar­ly under­stat­ed, includ­ing Ana Brun’s bit­ter­sweet lead per­for­mance as Chela, which won her the Sil­ver Bear for Best Actress.

A rela­tion­ship dra­ma that’s light on dra­ma, The Heiress­es fol­lows two ail­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries in Asunción, Paraguay, who are com­plete­ly devot­ed to each oth­er. Martinessi’s deci­sion to focus on an old­er female char­ac­ter in a same-sex rela­tion­ship is pleas­ing­ly nuanced – their rela­tion­ship is ten­der and matter-of-fact.

When the gre­gar­i­ous Chiq­ui­ta (Mar­gari­ta Irún) is incar­cer­at­ed after incur­ring var­i­ous debts, Chela is forced back into the world she retreat­ed from long ago. Light on cash and look­ing for a dis­trac­tion, she sets up an impromp­tu taxi ser­vice, fer­ry­ing her old­er sister’s wealthy friends to and from their week­ly card games. Although she’s had to sell off her home piece by piece in order to fund her partner’s legal coun­sel, she is reluc­tant to part with her beloved car – it grants her a new sense of free­dom, hint­ing at the ter­ri­fy­ing notion that pos­si­bil­i­ties still wait beyond her front door.

There’s an excep­tion­al gen­tle­ness about Martinessi’s work, where glassy indif­fer­ence of the wealthy con­trasts from an over­crowd­ed noisy prison, where Chiquita’s friend­ships are cur­ren­cy, bought and sold for the price of a cig­a­rette. Chela seems at once vul­ner­a­ble and dis­tant as she watch­es word­less­ly while her prized pos­ses­sions are offered up for sale, picked over by wealthy acquain­tances, vul­tures at her liv­ing wake.

The inse­cu­ri­ties of age­ing and grow­ing old alone are writ large in this del­i­cate char­ac­ter por­trait, but there’s a lot of hope present. As Chela ven­tures out into the world again, she learns to stand on her own two feet.