It is 1935, but this is not really relevant. In the autumn of what could also be an anonymous year, an elderly peasant couple waits for their son who is fighting at the front. Just as they are waiting for the rain which repeatedly seems on its way yet never perseveres. And for the end of the heat and the arrival of a cooling wind. And for their dog to stop barking. They wait and wait, and as they wait they do simple things and have sparse conversations. Or don’t they? In this first Paraguayan 35mm film since the 1970s, meanings are meticulously generated. It is above all the passing of time that makes the painful patience of the characters tangible and increasingly oppressive. While they both have to depend on the other, they can’t find each other. Fragments of conversations between mother and son make it clear that she doesn’t even expect her son to turn up any more. The father continues to react from a feeling of hope. Paraguayan Hammock is a tranquil chamber play in the Paraguayan open air in which an opulent soundtrack filled with natural sounds becomes an almost visible set for this personal drama that unfolds in silence. (SdH)
