Liverpool

A sailor travels through a harsh but beautiful landscape in search of his old hometown and what remains of his family.

Farrel (Juan Fernández) is a merchant seaman, toiling away below deck on long-haul shipping routes. When his ship is forced to dock at Ushuaia, southern Argentina’s gateway to Antarctica, he requests permission to go ashore to find out if his ailing mother is still alive. Downing drinks as he goes, the permanently soused sailor eventually manages to hitch a ride on a logging truck headed for his old hometown, to the place and the people he left behind. There, he discovers that his mother is still alive, but barely – and that she’s living with Farrel’s own daughter, Analía, whom he abandoned prior to her birth.

Lisandro Alonso’s fourth feature – which, like its predecessors, bowed at Cannes – marshals a larger budget to follow another of his lonely men across a vivid landscape. Shot amid the icy surrounds of Tierra del Fuego, it’s a sensorial work aswirl with wind and snow, aching with isolation both environmental and emotional. Though armed with more traditional narrative elements than Alonso’s first three movies, Liverpool is another work in which so much story – and backstory – is conveyed silently, perceptible only to engaged viewers.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival