Reinas is a charming film, a marvel of simplicity, made profound by the director’s subtle cinematic dexterity. Klaudia Reynicke returns to familiar territory to craft an intricate view of the ties that bind. Her latest film reminds us of the interconnectedness of all that life contains, be it personal or political. Reinas is also a memento of a time and place, a space where imagination thrives, no matter the reality.
Disparate dynamics come into play in this film as it follows two young girls trying to manoeuvre a life-changing event. Their world is shaped by the adults who are in charge. On the surface, Reinas is an emotional film about families, with a coming-of-age narrative woven throughout. But Reynicke threads a complex web of factors that link the stories and characters to larger issues around identity. In this film, reality meets dreams; the intimate meets the political.
Reynicke develops concentric circles that emanate from and overlap with the concerns of each character. This story does not happen in a vacuum – there is a socio-political reality around the family drama. It is set in the summer of 1992 in Lima, Peru: the economy is tanking, and the government is in turmoil.
A mother, Elena, decides to emigrate with her daughters, Lucia and Aurora, to America, where a new job and a fresh start await. However, she must get first permission from her estranged husband, Carlos. Elena encourages them to get to know him before they leave the country. Lucia and Aurora are unsure of the whole situation and certainly suspicious of this stranger who is introduced as their father.
Elena’s world, and the one which the girls know, is contained within her extended family unit. It is the space of safety and security, and it is full of warmth and love. But it is also full of contradictions, of old traditions and superstitions on the one hand and rules and order on the other. Carlos is the outsider who is first introduced to the viewer as he is telling what seems to be a tall tale. It doesn’t appear to be anything suspicious until he tells another contradictory one and it then becomes clear that his reality is a murky one. Who is he and what is his life really like?
As the film progresses, Reinas becomes an entrancing film of shifting perspectives. It is obvious that Carlos occupies the world of imagination and that he spins this viewpoint into the lives of the girls. He represents the world of the unknown as unexpected sagas spill out of his mouth. It’s not clear what he will in fact do from one moment to the next. The more this parent spends time with his daughters, the more different their outlook on their life becomes. Their mother and father’s worlds clash, leaving confusion in the girls’ own interactions. Meanwhile, the political reality starts to infiltrate their intimate, personal spaces.
Reynicke deftly uses cinematic means to convey the transformations occurring in Reinas. Her concentrated strategy with quotidian details offsets some of the characters’ flights of fancy like Carlos’s ever-changing identity and the supposed ghost sightings at the grandmother’s house. These elements come together as a cohesive whole thanks to the episodic nature of the scenes which convey these shifting perspectives.
What really ties the various tropes of Reinas together is the particularly nostalgic cinematography. It smacks of memory, with a look just slightly removed from realism. The film leans heavily on the colour turquoise, from the colour of clothing and objects to the water at the beach. This feels like a detail made greater by a human psyche. Reinas thus becomes a vision of a past, a moving image entry in a family history.
In Reinas, Reynicke displays the subtlety of a master as she crafts a profound experience using deceptively simple means. Her focus appears to be on details of daily life but as she builds them up, a more complex situation emerges. The film is not just a reflection of how the girls’ identity is shaped by the forces around them – be they familial or socio-political – but the fact that each character becomes affected by their interactions with the others. It starts to become clear that there is a lot of growth and movement happening in Reinas and not just on the part of the kids.
