ANCHOR AND HOPE is the second feature from Spanish director Carlos Marques-Marcet (10.000Km) and it will play at the Sydney Film Festival, 2018. And what a delightful offering it is. Beginning with deliciously luxuriant undertitles, absorbing and gently progressing us toward a tunnel end with Penny Seeger and Ewan Maccoll filling the audio track with a reflective and resonant rendering of ‘Dirty Old Town’.
As the lap of water creeps louder and the whistling of the song fades, we see a woman in silhouette. This is Eva (Oona Chaplin) and she is the hope of the film. Her anchor is her partner, Kat (Natalia Tena) and they live on a canal boat in the increasingly built-in waterways of modern London.
They will be joined soon by best friend Roger (David Verdaguer) who is visiting from Kat’s Spanish homeland and whose arrival precipitates the bubbling to the surface of an old tension. Eva wants to be mother. When it comes to tricky idea of children, the lovers have diametrically opposed views and Eva will pressure Kat to be something outside her nature.
The relationship between the women is passionate and adventurous when we first meet them, grieving and loving and laughing, in Eva’s mother’s garden after an hilarious cat burial. There are so many laughs in the early part of the film and the lightness is just joyous when they are joined by Roger. They are so silly, so relaxed and crazy, so much fun to watch that you want to get pissed with them too. There seems to be a bit of tension every now and then but too much fun is being had to worry about that.
The film is gradual in its exploration of the disturbance to the fun-loving trio. Eva’s mother Germaine (Geraldine Chaplin) is a semi-reformed hippy who adds a note of the rational to the proceedings and, as we learn more about their exterior world and see some of their lives away from each other, the tension comes more into focus.
Oona Chaplin is so enjoyable as the less effusive of the pair and her interior world is expressive and driven towards this parenting goal. Tena’s Kat is the more dynamic, she goes on long runs, is seldom still. She revels in bouncing around and loving life. And they make a gorgeous couple. With Roger’s contribution, the impregnation attempts are hilarious and heartbreaking by turn. Verdaguer takes Roger on quite a trip with these women and the chemistry of the trio makes the film so enjoyable.
And interesting. Their lives on the water give the viewer an alternative look at modern London. Called TIERRA FIRME … (firm ground) …in Spanish, the film details canal living in a discrete and personalised evocation of this fascinating lifestyle of constant movement. Taking out the shit is a short, sharp gross out and the imagery is balanced between loud trains crossing above them and long gliding sequences on the water
ANCHOR AND HOPE is beautifully shot in a warm and naturalistic style. (Dagmar Weaver-Madsen ) Despite the constant travel, they must move the vessel every two weeks, the cinematography seldom pans or pulls with only the occasional tilt up at the threatening structures beginning to enclose the canals. The focus instead is on tracking the characters and there is a reassuring and non-intrusive stability of view.
The audio is stunning. Not just the wonderful choice of songs but the foregrounding of sound effects. They add to the realism of the characters’ circumstances with a verisimilitude that pulls one into their world. Particularly effective is the use of naturalist audio during some of the film’s engrossing wordless sequences. Actually, much is done wordlessly here. There is a long track of an angry, hurt, running Kat that gives a view of the canal and neighbours’ boats that is powerful in its lack of speech. There are changes of heart and wounding and long silent discussions leading to important decisions. One sequence at the piano is replete with pressure and fear, heartbreakingly rational yet overwhelmingly vital to the narrative and completely wordless.
Marques-Marcet has created a film which thrives on story and our love for these three. Only slightly flawed, immensely human and vibrant with love, they are characters to touch the heart and to invest in. We want things to be good for them, for it all to work out fine, for them to be a happy family. Do we get what we hope?
You can see when ANCHOR AND HOPE plays at the Sydney Film Festival [Facebook] 6- 17 June, 2018.
