Waiting for the End
At the 60th Berlinale, where very few Spanish films are showing, the Forum section presented Luis Sampieri’s End, whose title refers both to the culmination and end-aim, as the not-entirely-unexpected conclusion confirms.
End opens with a strange meeting between three youngsters: an organised and methodical boy who is the ringleader; Moroccan girl Mishima (whose veil surprises and thus angers the organised boy); and Anna. They don’t know each other but met perhaps on the Internet.
These three protagonists, who are silent on the whole for their "end-aim" is not to become friends (besides, what’s the point? Anna remarks), have a common mission to do, or more precisely to finish something, which remains a mystery until the final minutes of the film. They travel by car to remote countryside, beneath what we sense to be a burning sun despite the film’s faded hues, and start waiting to the song of the cicadas, separately and without talking, for a whole day. One of the girls is unsure, the other is certain, and the boy continues his meticulous preparations.
And while the cicadas continue to sing, we glimpse in interludes a few quick pixelated bucolic shots, which are part of the amateur video that completes the explanation at the end of the film.
It’s just a matter of waiting; the audience’s aim ends up coinciding with the three youngsters’ undertaking, that is to find out the ending and know what it will involve. We understand why the director wanted us to experience this waiting, but even though the idea is a good one, we can’t help wondering if a short of medium-length film would have sufficed.
(Translated from French)
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