Liverpool

Liverpool starts on board a large ship on its way to the Argentine Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world. One of the sailors is Farrel, who tells the captain that he wants to take some leave there in order to visit his mother, whom he hasn’t seen for 20 years. He disembarks and, like earlier heroes in Alonso’s films, sets off on his journey. On foot or in the back of a truck, he treks deep into the freezing mountains of Tierra del Fuego. The alcoholic Farrel keeps himself warm with booze – lots of booze – and falls asleep occasionally in strange places. Once he arrives in the hamlet at the end of the world, he finds his mother needy and dying, and he turns out to have a daughter too.
Liverpool has a rather more complex narrative structure than Alonso’s earlier films. The film doesn’t end when Farrel reaches his destination. Nor does it end when the protagonist leaves again. And the sketch of the microcosm of the remote village is very hectic in Alonso’s terms.
It is apt that in the case of the apparently minimal narratives of directors like Lisandro Alonso, an endless amount can be written, said and, even better, thought, about issues that are not answered or shown – or not explicitly at least. Where is the daughter’s mother? What does the title mean? Where does Farrel end up? What will the next film by Alonso be? (GT)

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