“April’s Daughter” Needs to Focus More
Genre：Drama
Director：Michel Franco
Cast：Emma Suárez、Hernan Mendoza、Joanna Larequi
Viola's Rating：6.4
Having
Director Guillermo del Toro winning Best Director and Best Picture of the
Academy Awards with The Shape of Water, Mexican feature films are getting more
and more attention these days. “April’s Daughter” was released in the US at AFI
Fest and Palm Springs International Film Festival, and was only seen at
festivals as well as in most countries. Being a satisfying film, “April’s
Daughter” actually needs to focus more on its plot development.
There
are four main characters in this drama. The protagonist, Valeria, is a 17
year-old, pregnant young girl, not quite adult. She lives in Puerto Vallarta
with Clara, her half-sister. The two sisters share the same mother, who also
appears in the flick, April. Valeria doesn’t want her long-absent mother,
April, to find out about her pregnancy, but due to their economic angst and the
overwhelming preparation and responsibility of going to have a baby in the house;
Clara decides to call their mother on her own. Answering to her daughters’ needs,
April comes, but the audience soon realizes the reason why Valeria had wanted
her to stay away.
Since
“April’s Daughter” mainly discusses the issue of premarital pregnancy, “age”
has been mentioned several times to emphasize how young Valeria and her
husband-to-be are. Even Valeria’s biological father and his current wife’s ages
are mentioned. However, April’s age remains to be a mystery. The audience gets
to know at what age did she give birth to her first daughter, Clara, but that’s
the only clue given out throughout the motion picture.
As
a movie of about 100 minutes’ duration, “April’s Daughter” has a rather slow
narration, and its quietness and tranquility match the simple life Valeria has,
which is close to the sea. Yet after her daughter is born, the baby’s cry is
sometimes a little bit too ear-piercing and disturbs the ambiance as well. This
gives moviegoers an uncomfortable feeling not because of the intimidating climax
built, but because of the emotion disrupted.
Parts
of the story aren’t consistent or reasonable enough for the audience to get the
picture of why characters do such and such things, and some interactions
between characters change vastly that it feels like a lot of details are
emitted. Therefore, the core value of “April’s Daughter” isn’t always clear.
Something
interesting is that in the original title, which is in Spanish, “daughter” is
in plural term, while in English, it’s singular. This attribute somehow provides
a totally different angle to the feature film. Also, whether picking April as
the mother’s name is meaningful or not isn’t conveyed in the film.
“April’s
Daughter” really is a flick that guides its audience to walk through the
protagonist’s growth, but it could be more profound with more focuses.
Picture Credit: IMDb
Comments
Post a Comment