News

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Robert Doveris's Plants (2015) is showing exclusively on Mubi from February 20 - March 22, 2018. Recent newspaper articles report that the generation in its late teens and early 20s, which habitually accesses online porn and uses apps like Tinder for sex talk, is having less actual sex. A similar cleft, between mediated overt sexuality and secret apprehension about real sex, is the central paradox of Chilean director Roberto Doveris’s winsome, quietly satirical debut feature, Plants (2015). The film’s young protagonist, Florencia (Violeta Castillo)—a shy, darkly brooding teenager—finds herself saddled with adult responsibilities when her mother, in the hospital and with increasingly meager means, cannot take care of her family. Meanwhile paralyzed and brain-dead, Florencia’s older brother, Sebástian (Mauricio Vaca), requires constant care. Whatever the causes of mother and brother’s illnesses may be—Doveris leaves this part ambiguous—after her aunt’s departure,...