Is love a danger, or will it save the day? Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes explores that question and the theme of family and community as a refuge in his feature debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, which world premieres in Cannes‘ Un Certain Regard section on Thursday.
It tells the story of Lidia, 11, “who grows up in a loving queer family pushed to the edge of an unwelcoming dusty mining town,” according to a synopsis. “They are blamed for a mysterious illness that’s starting to spread – said to be passed through a single gaze, when one man falls in love with another.”
Check out an exclusive clip for the movie, produced by Quijote Films in Chile and Les Valseurs in France, with sales being handled by Charades, here.
The modern western, starring Tamara Cortés, Matías Catalán, and Paula Dinamarca, may be set in the Chilean desert in the 1980s, well before the 29-year-old was born. But the queer director knows the challenges his characters face, including violence, fear and hatred, from his family’s experience.
“My family comes from the suburbs of Chile’s capital, Santiago, and they rented this little hairdresser salon and hired gay people to cut hair. At that time, it was just gay people cutting hair,” he tells THR. “My mother was very close to them, and all of them died of AIDS. And I remember that my mother didn’t have much information about it. We just heard that it was a very dangerous thing that can be transmitted very easily. It was just scary.”
That is part of the context in which Céspedes created his story. “I was also inspired by real people and how dissidents and transgender people, when they are abandoned by society, create communities and families,” he explains. “That is special for me and the core of the film, the creation of a real family that is not sharing blood.”
Finding Lidia took a year of auditions before the creative team hit the jackpot with Cortés. “It was her first time around trans women and such a diverse group,” the director recalls. “But when we put them together, she was very comfortable and very natural. And she has this mix of an adult attitude and also this kind of humor.”
‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo’
Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
The idea that a gaze could transmit AIDS is not one Céspedes ever heard anyone suggest. “It’s a total creation, but in real life, I have heard very similar things,” he says before sharing thoughts fit for the post-truth world. “There was ignorance at that time, and even now. When you don’t have access to information, you create explanations, because us human beings need an explanation for everything. So, I thought that in this fictional town, what they think about the disease can be something that does not confront reality. We’re having sex between men, and that’s the main way of transmission. But why would we say that, if we can create another explanation that fits our way of seeing life?”
In that sense, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is a plea to face reality and others. In fact, the need for being open to encountering people who are different is a core message that Céspedes feels is very timely. “We grow up in a generation where people are taking very hard positions on who’s the bad one and who’s the good one, but I think we are missing that conversation and that looking each other in the eye.”
Diego Céspedes
Is the filmmaker optimistic that even in a divided world, humans can build real connections? “That’s a possibility, even if we don’t see it too much in our modern society,” he tells THR. “As human beings, we can talk, and we can find agreement when we look each other in the eye. We need to talk more.”
