Review: Kept and Dreamless (Las Mantenidas Sin Sueños, 2005) ★★★
Kept and Dreamless is, above all else, a mood picture. It makes spectators adopt the same sentiments as the characters, as if they were living right along side them. When things are joyful, we are joyful; when things are desperate, we are desperate as well. The problem with this approach is that it can feel a bit cloying, and at times Kept and Dreamless falls into this trap. Despite this, Martín De Salvo and Vera Fogwill’s work is a dreamy and spirited portrayal of a mother and daughter at the end of their rope during the Argentinian economic crisis of the early 2000’s.
Verga Fogwill plays Florencia, a young, drug-addicted mother who has little hope for her future and is too busy getting high to change things. Eugenia, played by Lucia Snieg, is her precocious daughter, whose energy and drive to improve their station in life allows her to care for her mother and keep their heads above water. However, as the economy goes into a free fall, money and goodwill become scarce, leaving Florencia and Eugenia to fend for themselves. The situation becomes even more dire when Florencia discovers that she is pregnant, and is unsure who has fathered the child.
As can be surmised from the synopsis, Kept and Dreamless is a pretty depressing film. Sure, there are dream-like sequences and even musical numbers that briefly lift the narrative out of the gloom of deprivation, but these are fleeting and feel out of step with the rest of the film. The mother and daughter are accompanied by a cast of colorful and eccentric characters, though none of them are all that believable as real people. And while the story is taken in a dark, quirky direction, the quirkiness gets lost in all of the ugly emotions. One feels bad for Florencia, and even worse for Eugenia, and the filmmakers do little to alleviate that. I am not implying that it is bad practice to make a film depressing, only that the tone is all over the place. When you have characters who are in a dire situation, it seems to be poor taste to insert strange, busy-body neighbors and oafish friends to lighten things up. It is as though they wanted to make a dark, off-beat comedy set during Argentina’s financial crisis, and instead made a film that lacks any kind of categorization. To be clear, the limits of genre are not a necessary requirement for a superior film, but when spectators are left conflicted over what the filmmakers are ultimately trying to say, it stifles the intended message or effect.
The shifts in tone make Kept and Dreamless difficult to assess, but the acting makes it much simpler. Though the two leads are generally very good, some of the supporting cast leaves much to be desired. Her friends and neighbors are incredibly two-dimensional, and only offer very bland humor to lift the mood. Mía Maestro plays Florencia’s affluent friend from high school, and while there is nothing wrong with her portrayal of the character, the writing does her no favors. The dichotomy the filmmakers try to strike between the classes is painfully obvious, and largely unnecessary. We are aware of the economic backdrop, so inserting a character just to make some poorly conceived statement about class differences leaves a bad taste. She wears her expensive clothes and behaves in a pretentious and condescending way, blissfully unaware of her friend’s destitution. It functions only as a cheap way to relate the story back to the economy.
Visually, the filmmakers do an exceptional job of mimicking Florencia’s surreal state of mind, while never letting go of the intrinsic despair of her reality. The camera drifts over her as she crumples into a ball, unable to raise her daughter, unable to change her destructive ways. The sets are drab and lifeless, set against a city that is too busy with its own problems to care at all for hers. Meanwhile, Eugenia’s intrusions into her mother’s space always offer a glimmer of hope, and a chance for redemption for her mother. Ultimately, we are left with a film that has a lot to say about the willpower that children can possess, but also the inability of those at the bottom to change their circumstances.
With all of its shortcomings, Kept and Dreamless has its moments of beauty and quality filmmaking, and should not be missed, particularly for those who enjoy Argentinian cinema.
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
If you’d like to watch Kept and Dreamless, it is currently available to rent or purchase via Amazon here.
