JESÚS SURPRISES AT TIFF

Scene from film Jesús

Jesús is a film that shows the lives of young adults and their struggles in a landscape that allows them to be too free.  Set against the backdrop of today’s Chile, the film focuses on Jesús, played by Nicolás Durán, who is involved in a K-pop dance group and is completely directionless by going out with his mates to party and drink and to have adrenaline type sex with whom ever he chooses.  The first part of the film really focuses on the relationship he has amongst his peers and his attitude towards life with that being globalized and hyper-sexualized.  It comments on the lack of moral fibre that the younger generation not only in Chile has but in the rest of the world.  The struggle of Jesús growing up is set against the repressed and live to work lifestyle of his father, played by Alejandro Goic, who grew under the Chilean dictatorship of Pinochet.  Their relationship is viewed as a pure generational disconnect and also a representation of single fatherhood in modern day Chile.
Jesús is one of those films that there are so many things to observe and you would not be able to pick it up unless someone told you.  During our talk with director Fernando Guzzoni and producer Giancarlo Nasi, it became much more apparent that Jesús is a film that is political and how a dictatorship-less Chile  affects their youth.  With no ideology of their generation, Jesús himself is trying to find his own identity in the film but clashes and repulses with the wishes of his father and after a night out partying and drinking, his peers.  This is one of the best surprises at the Toronto International Film Festival as it is one hell of a roller coaster ride of a film that contains many surprises.    The manner to which Fernando Guzzoni crafts the film and weaves all the issues of disconnect with our family and to the consequences of globalization stands out to be so amazing.

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