First-Time Locarno Contender Leonor Teles Questions Home and Love in ‘Baan’: ‘Sometimes We Need to Run Away to Come Back’
09.08.2023 - 12:09
/ variety.com
Leonor Teles questions the stability of both. “Baan” (Thai for home) reimagines the world of a lovelorn person coming to terms with her own loneliness through a quasi-magical shift between Bangkok and Lisbon. Part of Locarno’s main competition, “Baan” follows a young woman named L.
(Carolina Miragaia) on her emotional journey, as she meets, falls for, and recovers from a serendipitous encounter with the elusive K. (Meghna Lall). L.
is an architect, but she is not bound to any place or home in particular. Instead, she sublimates the now-lost intimacy wandering through the city at sunrise, on the road to self-discovery. With its idiosyncrasies, “Baan” fits well within the catalog of its production company, Uma Pedra no Sapato, and its support for the brazen voices of Portuguese cinema, old and new, such as Filipa Reis and Monica Lima.
Paris-based Totem Films (“We”, “Saturn Bowling”) handle the film’s world sales. In her acclaimed documentary debut, “Ashore”, Teles anchored herself in a physical space — her hometown Vila Franca de Xira, just outside of Lisbon. Now, for her sophomore feature, she uses jump cuts, musical transitions, and fiction to bring an interior world to the big screen.
“Baan”’s boldest formal gambit has to do with splicing and spatiality: One second, L is in a club in Thailand, the next, she steps out on her street in Lisbon; she speaks Portuguese in a Thai corner shop and inconsistencies conjure up a third space. Talking to Variety in Locarno, the director points out that “it doesn’t matter if it’s Lisbon, or if it’s Bangkok. It’s a cinematic space.” Elaborating on what inspired her to overlap different times and spaces, Teles says: “When you’re brokenhearted, you experience time differently.” When
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