THE STORY – A middle-aged composer allows her friend to use her apartment to film a television interview, opening up a quietly revealing space, in Nicolás Pereda’s feminist-minded domestic comedy, an expert blend of realism and subtle absurdity.
THE CAST – Teresita Sánchez, Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas, Luisa Pardo, Lázaro G. Rodríguez, Francisco Barreiro, Andrew Rogers & José Rodríguez López
THE TEAM – Nicolás Pereda (Director/Writer) & Juan Francisco Maldonado (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 70 Minutes
In the first five minutes of Nicolás Pereda’s “Everything Else is Noise,” we watch from above a Mexico City intersection where cars are jammed, their horns blaring at full volume. At the same time, we hear the soothing sound of a cello.
Just as we’re about to wonder what the hell this movie is about, we pull back to see that the traffic we’ve been watching is from the apartment of composer Tere (Teresita Sánchez), who’s been practicing her cello. Life isn’t easy for Tere. Even now, she’s dealing with a complaining neighbor (Andrew Rogers) who demands that she stop playing her cello in the morning while his baby sleeps. Since Tere has already promised another neighbor not to play in the afternoon, she politely declines and shuts the door. She has no time for whiners.
On this particular day, she has promised fellow cellist and composer Rosa (Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas) the use of her apartment for a big TV interview she’s having with top presenter Lázaro (Pereda regular Lázaro G. Rodríguez). As two women musicians in the predominantly male Mexican music scene, they quickly became close friends, with Rosa serving as her mentor of sorts. (Even today, she is giving Rosa tips on how to make her interview “better TV.”) For her part, Tere has no regrets, even though her career stalled when her affair with a superstar composer named Estevez led to the birth of her daughter, Luisa (now an adult).
When the men arrive, things start to go off track. As the pompous Lázaro and his cameraman, Paco (Francisco Barreiro), start to set up their equipment, the building’s power goes out, causing more fumbling. When the power finally returns, a dog across the hall barks incessantly, and the shoot is interrupted again as the traffic horns pick up. Then someone forgets to mic the interviewee, and all of a sudden, it’s nighttime, and the day is shot. To top it off, the grand Estevez (José Rodríguez López) shows up unexpectedly. As the men pontificate, the women can’t help but laugh.
Though only 70 minutes long, Pereda’s film is packed with his signature styles and themes. Over his two-decade career, he has called his films “docufiction,” marrying narrative and documentary storytelling to create something different from either format alone. With a fictional documentary crew at its center, “Everything Else is Noise” is certainly that, but Pereda brings much more to the table. Within a single set, Tere’s apartment, he has built a fortress of feminism where his trio of women can support one another while enjoying the foibles of the men around them.
As we hear in the film’s opening sequence, Tere’s apartment, with its mellow cello music, serves as a respite from the macho culture outside. Even when the documentary crew piles in with cameras and condescension, the three generations of women support one another. When Lázaro, for example, tries to lead Tere, the veteran musician, into acknowledging his idea that she was a tragic, struggling mother, she brushes aside the very idea. Instead, she’s there for Rosa, who is every bit the professional, wanting to maintain her calm demeanor, no matter what nonsense Lázaro wants her to say.
Then there’s Luisa. As the youngest of the group, her total lack of respect for the men around her sets her apart from the others. Shouldn’t decorum require her to at least wear pants around this distinguished interviewer? Not interested, she suggests, moving about the set with ease in nothing but a long shirttail and bikini bottom. When the time comes to show her prowess on the cello, Luisa makes all the men shut their eyes as she screeches out the most horrifying sounds imaginable. And as Lázaro prattles on and on, watch her utter boredom as she plays with her cigarette, totally upstaging him. Pardo is simply hilarious in the role and, incidentally, delivers some of the best cigarette acting of the year.
Luisa’s screeching cello, while the men shut their eyes, shows how Pereda uses Guido Berenbaum’s sound design as almost another character in the narrative. Whether it’s the car horns, the barking dog, or even the silence of the power outage, sound moves the storyline in different directions, keeping the viewer on edge but always engaged.
As complexly drawn as the film’s female characters may be, the men, however, are anything but. When they’re not being annoying (such as the complaining neighbor), they’re pretentious or manipulative, as Lázaro shows when he tries to steer Tere and Rosa into his imagined version of their lives. When Lázaro falls all over himself to impress the preening Estevez, both men become caricatures. The macho imperative present in much of Mexican culture is certainly ripe for satire. Still, if these men were presented as even a touch more believable a threat, rather than as cartoons or punching bags, the women’s predominance might have felt more well-earned.
But their foolishness helps “Everything Else Is Noise” work as a classic farce, which Pereda brings off with panache and expert comic timing. In Mexico’s macho culture, it’s refreshing to see the film’s female characters see through the men’s studied masculinity and respond not with angry vitriol but with bemused amusement. What fools these mortals be.
