IR Film Review: THE ELDERLY [Dark Star]

The aspect of heat as a perception of change and growth and eventual disassembling of society is a real and practical fact. "The Elderly" takes this but changes it to a chaotic tome of people knowing what is coming and painting it in almost a reversal rapture. Zorion Eguileor plays the elder Manuel who loses his wife to a supposed suicide jumping off their balcony in Madrid. He goes to live with his son, his new wife and his granddaughter. The context of his obsession with old tech and batteries is both disconcerting but never quite pays off despite its eventual connection within the last shot. Gustavo Salmeron as his son Mario trying to do his best to find the balance between honor and reality creates a grounding nature. However it is Paula Gallego as Mario's daughter and Manuel's granddaughter Naia who is the view through which the audience sees trying to help and protect her grandfather who is losing his freedom (which a trip to the nursing home shows).

One hopes that she might be a transcendent character and, in a way, she is. However it almost would work better if she was partly a vessel for what is happening and not just a way to understand the world that "The Elderly" is building. There is a context of shadows and light and, as the film moves towards its conclusion, the imagery is both mythic and conceptual within the piece but not groundbreaking. Directors Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez seem to understand the path they are taking where the elders take back a certain amount of power, though really not of their own accord. If there was more a sense of what they are seeing through their eyes and the voices that permeate their existence, it would almost make it more scary and relatable. Eguileor plays Manuel with a resignation but also with an elusive knowing that points to a fact that he might understand what he is going through but is relentless to stop it as it travels like a plague through the city. B-

By Tim Wassberg