Oscuro animal (2016)

Directed by: Felipe Guerrero | 107 minutes | drama | Actors: Marleyda Soto, Luisa Vides Galiano, Jocelyn Meneses

The exuberant greenery of the Colombian jungle is breathtakingly beautiful, but behind the natural beauty there is a constant threat. Life and death; innocence and cruelty are close together here.

Although the peace in Colombia is still fragile and men and women – especially in the interior – are not sure of their safety everywhere, the healing process has begun. That means looking back at the atrocities and sharing many testimonies. Films about the Colombian conflict now come in all shapes and sizes and debut director Felipe Guerrero has chosen not to add an actual film, but a subtle character study of three women who have become victims of the violence.

At the beginning of ‘Oscuro animal’, a gun is depicted close-up, right next to the crotch of the paramilitary using it. A telling shot: in this spot, the two are as cruel as they are effective weapons towards women. The civil war in Colombia, which seems to have come to an end with the peace agreement between the government and the largest guerrilla group FARC, made tens of thousands of women victims of (sexual) violence. This was used by paramilitary groups, the guerrillas and by rural military personnel. Many of these stories have surfaced in recent years.

Director Guerrero has used these stories and zooms in on three young Colombian women. We only read their names during the credits, because during the film nothing is spoken and hardly anything is explained. A trickle of blood, a red stain on the bedding, a stray shoe; those are the unmistakable clues from which the viewer must infer what happened here. The village of Rocío has been destroyed. Her family is gone and the area surrounded by enemies. She decides to move to the city. ‘La Mona’ is systematically raped by a paramilitary and after the umpteenth time she stabs him with a kitchen knife and runs away. Nelsa herself is a member of a paramilitary unit and is used there as a sex slave by the commander. After yet another inhumane act, she decides to escape. The three women take matters into their own hands and head for the Colombian capital.

Since the women do not speak, the images must do so all the more. The gruesome context is mostly suggested; we see little of the violence itself. But the pained faces of the women reveal a world of misery. The choice for the absence of dialogue initially seems like a challenge, but turns out to work. Although there are times when a few sentences wouldn’t have been bad. The absence of a soundtrack – except for the strikingly aggressive music that occasionally blares from one of the soldier’s radios – is also a special choice. This is precisely why the viewer feels surrounded by the jungle, with its cacophony of animal sounds, rippling waters and pelting rains.

The bar where Nelsa and her partner drink a beer, the river where the soldiers relax, dominoes on the table, the bird sounds, the green foliage: in combination with the calm camerawork, there are moments when life seems to go on as usual. The images could be recognizably Colombian and even arouse positive feelings. Director Guerrero, who has not lived in his motherland for years, may have wanted to share that feeling and therefore did not portray everything in jet black. But just then he strikes and the film forces the viewer to face the facts. For example, there is the confrontational scene in which the bus that takes Rocío to Bogotá is attacked. The passengers killed in this attack are provided with an impromptu burial in the forest by the survivors.

The apparent apathy with which this happens is stabbing. Distrust runs deep. The ‘dark beast’ of the title is also the war itself, the violence that is deeply rooted in the minds of women. The little glimmer of hope comes from the other women, young and old, who meet the three characters along the way.

The director and his cameraman have made striking choices to portray nature versus the city, which – despite what its raw and gray appearance suggests – offers safety. The complicated contradictions between urban and rural areas in Colombia are touched on so subtly in ‘Oscuro animal’. Together with the symbolism present in the film, this provides plenty of food for thought.