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Too rapid a departure from convention will leave audiences adrift in this dark comedy. Although steeped in clinging, crawling dread followed up by a remarkable awakening, the debut feature film of the Peruvian Vega brothers falls short of a full house. The film starts on the right foot, with deeply shadowed interior settings in the shabbiest, most stripped down hovel imaginable. The hovel is in the barrios of Lima, a place everybody wants to be from and in which nobody plans to stay. But they are all there anyway, bubbling, boiling and colliding in a cauldron of seething poverty and barely missed chances. One of the survivors is Clemente (Bruno Odar). Clemente is the son of the pawnbroker and...

Directors: Daniel Vega Vidal, Diego Vega Vidal Writers: Daniel Vega Vidal, Diego Vega Vidal Starring: Bruno Odar, Gabriela Velásquez, Carlos Gassols, María Carbajal Octubre takes the risk of placing at its center a character who is stubbornly passive and almost totally inexpressive. Set in Lima, Peru during the incense haze and sweeping processions of the annual Lord of Miracles festival, the film tells the story of a cold and emotionally inert pawnbroker named Clemente (Bruno Odar), who lives alone in a rundown apartment with cracked walls and peeling wallpaper and maintains a modest business lending small amounts of cash to everyday people facing hard times. For Clemente, life is a series of transactions, exchanges, barters, and cons. He makes his loans, collects the interest, and then when the workday is done, visits prostitutes in ramshackle brothels, leaves his cash behind, and walks back into the night. This is really the...

With the Cannes Film Festival beginning next week, it’s timely that Octubre, which snagged the Un Certain Regard Jury prize in 2010, is set to hit theaters in New York today. With a decidedly deadpan sense of humor Octubre is a Peruvian comedy reminiscent of the tale of Silas Marner.

In Lima, October is a time of religious celebration in which Christians pray for the change they wish to see. While the streets are full of vibrant colors, the lives of the impoverished residents are decidedly lackluster. Here, we meet Clemente (Bruno Odar), a stone-faced moneylender with a penchant for prostitutes. His is a steadfastly solitary life until one of his former paid paramours breaks into his home to leave him the fruits of her labor: a beautiful (but oft wailing) baby girl. Clemente immediately attempts to give her back, but can’t locate the missing mother. As the baby...

Reviewed by Amanda Georges

(May 2011)

Directed/Written by: Daniel Vega Vidal and Diego Vega Vidal

Starring: Bruno Odar, Gabriela Velásquez and Carlos Gassols

Clemente (Bruno Odar), a small-time pawnbroker, gazes through his jeweler’s eye loupe as he appraises family treasures brought to him by desperate customers hoping for some quick cash. They sit only a few feet across the table from him, but he cannot see their faces past the trinkets gleaming in his hand. In a much too predictable fashion, his worldview gets broadened past the magnifying glass because of a woman and a child.

The Peruvian film “Octubre” from brothers Daniel Vega Vidal and Diego Vega Vidal, which won the jury prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, is unable to expand its own limited view past unoriginal style and characterizations. The film is filled with half thoughts and characters who are not fully dimensional. The film lacks...

Reviewed by Amanda Georges

(May 2011)

Directed/Written by: Daniel Vega Vidal and Diego Vega Vidal

Starring: Bruno Odar, Gabriela Velásquez and Carlos Gassols

Clemente (Bruno Odar), a small-time pawnbroker, gazes through his jeweler’s eye loupe as he appraises family treasures brought to him by desperate customers hoping for some quick cash. They sit only a few feet across the table from him, but he cannot see their faces past the trinkets gleaming in his hand. In a much too predictable fashion, his worldview gets broadened past the magnifying glass because of a woman and a child.

The Peruvian film “Octubre” from brothers Daniel Vega Vidal and Diego Vega Vidal, which won the jury prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, is unable to expand its own limited view past unoriginal style and characterizations. The film is filled with half thoughts and characters who are not fully dimensional. The film lacks...

This has been a great year to engage with Peruvian cinema. Not only did I have the chance to speak with Claudia Llosa whose film La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow, 2009) was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award®, but I was able to follow-up with Dr. Kimberly Theidon, whose research informed Llosa's film. Also, I had the opportunity to speak with Javier Fuentes-León, whose Contracorriente (Undertow, 2010) has seductively haunted the hearts of festival-goers the world over and earned the honor of being Peru's official submission to the foreign language category for the 2011 Academy Awards®. Further, I was fortunate to sit down with Diego Vega--half of the brother team behind Octubre (October, 2010)--upon the occasion of October's North American premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff). October's full dance card on the festival circuit required filmmaker brothers Daniel and Diego Vega to divvy up rounds.