Miami International Film Festival Grand Prize Winner
From May 18 through 24, 2012.
It’s a mark of the surefire skill of Cristián Jiménez that he adapts a literary work about writers, novels and sex into something as purely cinematic as Bonsái. Flashing backwards and forwards in time to Julio’s time as a college student, and then eight years later trying to make a name for himself as a writer, Bonsái effortlessly grows into a rich, open and organic film about character, idealism, literature and…plants.
As a college student, Julio nestles up to the brainy Emilia – more do to her initiative than his. To impress her, he lies that he’s read Proust. It’s not a relationship that will stand the test of time. As an adult facing his 30s, Julio is struggling to find his voice as a writer. He attempts to get a job transcribing a handwritten manuscript by Gazmuri, a veteran author, but is rejected. He’s still lying, though – he tells his neighbor Blanca that he’s in fact transcribing the work, as he writes the novel that he thinks Gazmuri should be writing. Which could or could not be the story of the Emilia of his youth.
This richly comic and poetic tale is as light on its feet as Philip Kaufman’s screen adaptation of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and just as arousing.
Tower Theater
1508 S.W 8th Street
Miami, FL 33135
305.642.1264
www.towertheatermiami.com
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