Nervous Translation

From the moment the title credit appeared on the screen I had a feeling that "Nervous Translation" would be my kind of movie and I was right. This is a child's eye view of the world, full of all the simplicity and innocence of early childhood in which the adults are the interlopers, often shot in close-up.

Yael is a little girl living in the Philippines with her mother. Her father is away from home, working overseas, but he sends messages on tape which Yael plays over and over as if her father is teaching her a new language. Everything is seen from her perspective and Jana Agoncillo is extraordinary in the part, not acting at all but simply being the child in question.

There isn't a great deal of activity in the picture which might not come as much of a surprise when you learn that director Shireen Seno once worked with Lav Diaz, (though at ninety minutes this is Lav Diaz in miniature). The closest the film comes to 'a plot' is Yael's search for what she believes to be a magic pen but even this is treated in an almost inconsequential manner and leads nowhere. The real themes of Seno's lovely little film are loneliness and the power of words, written or heard at a distance. Remarkable really, in a film that is more often silent than not.