THE STORY – A woman has to deal with unwanted housemates when she returns to Venezuela to sell her childhood home.
THE CAST – Asia Argento, Dogreika Tovar, Yermain Sequera, Jorge Thielen Hedderich, Arturo Rodriguez, Jericho Montila, Jose Aponte, Rafael Gil, Juan Francisco Borges, Teresa Bracho & Ana Helena Anglade Armand
THE TEAM – Jorge Thielen Armand (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 106 Minutes
Premiering in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, the Venezuelan drama “Death Has No Master” is the third feature from writer-director Jorge Thielen Armand, following “Le Soledad” (2016) and 2020’s “La Fortaleza” (Fortitude). Strong on atmosphere and tension, but ultimately light on plot until the finale, this isn’t an entirely successful entry from the filmmaker, though it certainly has its moments.
Asia Argento plays Caro, a forty-something Venezuelan woman who was raised abroad, but returns to her home country to sell off her childhood home after the death of her father, a former Cacao plantation owner. However, when she arrives at the rundown mansion, she discovers that Sonia (Dogreika Tovar), who used to work for her father, now lives there with her young son, Maiko (Yermain Sequera), and is refusing to move. Sonia rents out a room in the property to another tenant (Jose Aponte), with whom she occasionally sleeps, while elderly Yoni (Arturo Rodriguez), Caro’s father’s former retainer, is also still a constant presence on the estate. Caro eventually seeks guidance from lawyer Roque (the director’s father, Jorge Thielen Hedderich, who also starred in La Fortaleza), setting the stage for a violent conclusion.
Armand invests the film with a hallucinatory quality right from the start, after a grisly prologue that goes unexplained in the script, but hints at a general history of bloodshed and violence. Thereafter, the house itself appears to contain echoes of the past, with fragments of voices whispering through the corridors, and dark figures appearing and disappearing, all of which may or may not be in Caro’s head. Thematically, the script attempts an uneasy blend of Caro’s evident past trauma – it seems she has come to the house in part to exorcise her own demons – and general social conflict in Venezuela itself, with simmering hatred between landowners and the poverty-stricken. However, nothing is clearly spelled out, which makes for a frustrating overall experience.
Armand has a good handle on atmosphere, suffusing the surroundings with a palpable sense of dread – we don’t exactly know what’s coming, but we know it isn’t going to be pretty. On top of that, Armand isn’t above a spot of obvious foreshadowing, including prominent shots of a whip and a rifle in the house, both of which it is fairly obvious will be important later. Armand’s command of atmosphere is heightened by excellent sound design, making the mansion increasingly oppressive, as if it’s filled with ghosts from the past, both literal and metaphorical. Sylvain Bellemare’s score accentuates that effect still further, ramping up the tension as the pieces fall into place for the final act.
The main problem is that the script feels unfocused throughout, unsure of which points it wants to make, and ends up leaving everything vague as a result. For instance, the relationship between Caro and Sonia initially seems promising, as Sonia remembers her from when she was a young girl. Still, that element doesn’t seem to have a significant payoff in the script. The characters are largely underwritten, serving more as ciphers, so we don’t really get to know any of them. Perhaps that’s the point – Caro is unable to connect with any of the inhabitants of her house, despite being born in the same country, so they remain as unknowable to us as they do to her. Either way, it makes for a difficult viewing experience.
As for the performances, Argento – who learned Spanish for the role – delivers a solid lead turn, but she’s not really required to do all that much, other than mope around a lot and wander up and down mansion corridors. That said, her frequently dazed expression is effective at suggesting past trauma. Of the supporting cast, Tovar, a non-actor making her screen debut, is the standout – she has a commanding screen presence that underlines her authority in the house. Similarly, Jorge Thielen Hedderich is good value as Roque, particularly when he puts the film’s grisly finale into motion, as all legal methods to remove the mansion’s unwanted inhabitants come to naught.
In fairness, the finale is suitably nasty, the natural culmination of the simmering violence in the air throughout the film. It’s just a shame that the rest of the film has to tread so much water to get there – there are only so many times you can watch Asia Argento moping in a corridor before things start to get repetitive. “Death Has No Master” ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, both in articulating a more overtly political message and in delivering more genre-based thrills. Instead, the script is frustratingly unfocused, feinting at various ideas and plot directions but failing to capitalize on any of them or see them through. In the end, it feels like there’s a good movie buried in here somewhere, but it gets lost in the haze and struggles to get out.
