‘They Will Be Dust’: Toronto Review

Dir: Carlos Marques-Marcet. Spain/Italy/Switzerland. 2024. 106mins

The flatly declarative title of They Will Be Mud means that the concept of loss of life is one thing we’re simply going to must get used to. This matter-of-fact method seeps into the fashion of Carlos Marques-Marcet’s daring fourth function (following Goya-winnning 2014 debut 10,000 KM, Anchor And Hope and The Days To Come), an admirably unsentimental and involving end-of-life drama that comes, unusually, peppered with dance sequences. The movie might have completely properly been performed as straight drama, carried by performances from veterans Angela Molina and Alfredo Castro. The daringly experimental selection to interrupt the emotional circulation with dance has helped the movie to win Toronto’s Platform award, however might divide viewers when Mud opens Valladolid pageant in October earlier than releasing theatrically in Spain in November.

An admirably unsentimental and involving end-of-life drama 

The opening sequence, that includes actor Claudia (Spanish grande dame Molina) going wild with ache and being calmed down by her theatre director husband Flavio (Chilean actor Castro) and daughter Violeta (Monica Almirall Batet, in her debut function), has a potent rawness that’s not replicated all through the remainder of the movie. With Maria Callas singing an aria from Samson And Delilah within the background, the scene morphs into ballet – a memorable spotlight. 

Claudia has a mind tumour and has determined to finish her life in Switzerland, whereas Flavio, unable to face life with out her, has determined to die by her aspect. The emotional penalties of this will not be performed out as totally as they is perhaps, however the movie’s first part does an excellent job of persuading us that Claudia and Flavio, each from the theatrical world, have a protracted historical past and an timeless devotion to at least one one other. It’s completely believable that Claudia’s sickness ought to, as Flavio explains it, have killed his personal ambitions.

Violeta, nonetheless, isn’t persuaded that each her mother and father committing suicide is such a very good plan. The toe-curling second of the movie’s three sections focuses on the awkwardness of the couple’s different kids and their households exhibiting up for a ceremony to mark the renewal of Claudia and Flavio’s vows, which they’ve arrange with out revealing their intentions to anybody. By some measures they’re a most self-involved and unappealing couple, which supplies the movie an actual innovative.

The reality in regards to the double suicide comes out cruelly in entrance of young children, in a speech by Violeta (“Might they die fortunately ever after!”) and we start to suspect, as does Flavio, that Claudia has set the entire thing up as a dramatic ultimate efficiency. This may play out within the oddly banal, hushed setting of a Swiss Dignitas clinic, the place Claudia is suggested to pick out “a playlist to die to”. (The movie’s music has certainly been lovingly curated, that includes not solely Callas but in addition the salsa of Hector Lavoe and the good Spanish flamenco artist Antonio Molina.)

Marques-Marcet’s earlier work takes problematic conditions and follows the emotional logic so far as it may go. They’re largely artifice-free however, in contrast, the busily choreographed free dance sequences of Mud, accompanied by Maria Arnal’s minimalist acapella rating, do really feel considerably wedged in and are prone to break up opinions. Whereas they’re putting as standalones, and the concept that dancing is one of the best antidote to loss of life comes over loud and clear, they break the hard-earned emotional circulation. It’s additionally onerous to see the place they’re rising from dramatically, until it’s from someplace deep in Claudia’s psyche – which is already fairly seen to us from Molina’s gripping efficiency.

Molina, whose timeline stretches again to Luis Bunuel by way of Almodovar, retains all of her energy in entrance of the digicam. She performs Claudia as a bodily fragile however spiritually resilient lady who has determined to benefit from the finish of her life by doing what she is aware of greatest – performing a job, generally theatrically and generally delicately. If this occurs to upset everybody round her, then dangerous luck to them. Castro because the comparatively muted and unsure Flavio, does properly to carry his personal all through their intense, intimate and superbly paced conversations: finally these make for the strongest scenes on this transferring, clever movie.