A series of stunning views of the misted mountains. A chill air of cobalt, deer antlers in the distance. From the electric quietness, a nicely choreographed drone shot tracks an off-road vehicle, then a second, climbing up a dirt slope to join a bigger group on a plain. Hunters, or rather poachers, and the breathtaking sight of a majestic dawn in the valley.
The opening scene of Spoor is nothing I hadn’t seen before, but its beauty is arresting nonetheless. The same can’t be said about the rest of film, a pot of genres ranging from dark comedy to environmental drama with some nostalgic nods at Murder, She Wrote and a cringing touch of Mission: Impossible, leading up to a slightly preposterous bucolic utopia for a merry epilogue. Likewise, its narrative looks like that of a television drama in search of an identity, that constantly chases facts rather than letting its characters be, and breathe, outside of the self-contained world it sets.
Some directorial choices certainly show talent and skills that go beyond the box, but still won’t save the film from being utterly ordinary, and its ambitious contents from coming across hardly more profound than a sign at the zoo. Don’t touch the animals.

He is standing on the shore contemplating an almost motionless sea, acknowledging his own limits as a bureaucrat, a man, a father, a whoremonger—and the absurdity of the pompous culture he represents for necessity. He is at a dead-end, retreating being his only option, although a seemingly impossible one.
Don Diego de Zama, the strenuous corregidor, the resolute and righteous judge. He who brought peace among the Indians and made justice without ever drawing the sword. But also Zama the desperate man, lost and distant, consumed by the atrocious loneliness of a God born old who cannot die.
Lucrecia Martel delves once more into the inmost feelings of an alienated creature, his broken dialogue with a world that was once his and is no more—and does so with exquisite taste, delivering one of the best of our time.

Foxtrot is a series of dreams, three, each one with its own protagonist, distinctive mise en scène, and direction. In one, the sudden sense of void is portrayed with distressing cynicism, elegant geometrical compositions, and meticulously designed camerawork. In another, it switches to an ironic, almost fairytale-like, visual language—the camera hardly moving as the framing becomes flat, square, two-dimensional. In the final one, as if overwhelmed by an unbearable weight of existence, it seems to free from any stylistic filter and embrace a more natural, intimate, approach. As in its Samuel Maoz’s words, the film is meant to ‘shock and shake, hypnotise, and move.’ Mission accomplished.
A mistaken name, an empty can, a camel in the street—Foxtrot’s portrait of a fate tragically written by the most insignificant events is excruciating, but at the same time its manneristic aesthetic ultimately muffles its creative identity letting the intuitions be prevailed by an excessively perfect cerebral cage.