LITIGANTE (THE DEFENDANT)

Stars: Carolina Sanín, Leticia Gómez, Antonio Martínez, Vladimir Durán and Alejandra Sarria.
Writers: Franco Lolli, Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay.
Director: Franco Lolli.

OPENING NIGHT: 58^th Semaine de la Critique, Festival de Cannes 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The emotional extremes we bear witness to in the face of impending mortality and the generational flow of familial love provide the existential framework for director Franco Lolli’s elegant, often profound and deeply resonant sophomore feature, Litigante (The Defendant). Having travelled to Cannes in 2014 with his debut Gente de bien, the Colombian director’s return to the Semaine de la Critique is an understated triumph.

Fronted by two superb actresses crafting vivid portrayals of old and new matriarchy, Lolli constructs a mother/daughter dynamic not dissimilar to that utilised by James L. Brooks for his Oscar-winner Terms of Endearment (1983). Unlike that relatively upbeat slice of well-to-do white American melodrama, however, Litigante presents a middle-class Colombian family in a downward spiral of tension, grief, black humour and barely restrained conflict. This is a home that runs deep with resentment and unfulfilled expectations, despite maintaining a façade of tolerant warmth and stable intellectualism.

With co-scripters Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay, Lolli provides layers of rich humanity for his key protagonist, 40-ish lawyer and single mother Silvia (Carolina Sanín); introduced as a passive observer, she sits by her mother Leticia (Leticia Gómez) as the elderly woman reacts with defiance to the news that the cancer that has been in remission for a year has returned. Refusing an extended hospital stay and invasive treatment, Leticia decides to see out her final days in the family home, not entirely aware of the burden it will place on her family (which has been patriarch-free for many years).

As Bogota’s Deputy Legal Secretary of Public Works, Silvia is implicated in corruption charges brought against her boss – another man absent for most of the film (as are several influential males in this female-centric story). Silvia must fend for herself in a heated radio interview conducted by journalist Abel (Vladimir Durán). An unlikely romance develops, but theirs is a love destined for difficulty as the obstinate and ailing Leticia weighs in on his suitability as Silvia’s prospective partner.

Carolina Sanín is wholly wonderful as Silvia, every ounce of pain she withholds and frustration she endures etched on the lines that seem to take shape on her face over the course of the narrative. As the title suggests, she is under constant scrutiny, forced to defend herself from a judicial system out to prosecute her office or a mother questioning her entirely reasonable life choices. The personification of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sanín is a true contemporary female heroine; stoic and determined to face her hardships, focused on others above herself and unwavering in her commitment to family, regardless of how challenging and tenuous that link may sometimes appear to be.   

All of life’s distractions, and the narrative’s subplots, fade away as Leticia’s health deteriorates; Silvia, her young son Antonio (Antonio Martínez, a natural screen performer) and 20-something sister ‘Majo’ (Alejandra Sarria) experience firsthand the daily pain and dwindling life energy of their once vibrant mother. So to does the audience, in scenes of aching tenderness and sharply focused emotionality; the astonishingly transformative performance by Leticia Gómez is even more remarkable given that the actress is the real-life mother of the director as well as the inspiration for the story, having been cared for by her son while recovering from a cancer bout.

The final frames of Franco Lolli’s Litigante speak to the cyclical nature of the parental bond, acknowledging that Silvia knows she is next in line for a similar decline and that Antonio, blissfully unaware as he presently is, will step into the carer’s role. It is a beautiful, universal, heartbreaking observation from a filmmaker fully invested in his story and characters.