Low Tide

“I need to know what surrounds me,” says the strange man who, fleeing through the jungle, turns up on the doorstep of a secluded house inhabited by two women. Right now he is surrounded by the constraints of his own vulnerability, and by nature, revealing itself as a considerably disquieting element which ultimately consumes everything in its path – like the rotting head of an animal bobbing about in a river delta. The action is shredded to the bare minimum, although it’s clear that, with a weapon and cash stashed away, evil is sure to follow. As in other films from the powerhouse of Latin-American minimalism, here, too, the light artistic stylisation feeds the mysterious tenor of the work, its austerity only deepening the inner tension. The director, willing to incorporate scenes of unexpected violence, gradually uncovers secrets and imprints of the past that can’t simply be wiped away. One of the film’s principal motifs is the loss of our rational perception of the world – because sometimes it’s good to admit that a fortune-teller’s cards will betray more about a person than a rifle through their luggage. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)