The Awakening — Childhood as an Alibi in the Cinema of Jaime Osorio Marquez

The Awakening: full review

The cartography of contemporary Latin American cinema stubbornly insists on revisiting the roughest corners of its geography under the indisputable premise that rural suffering possesses a sort of redemptive purity. Jaime Osorio Marquez once again treads this path paved with aesthetic good intentions and dead-end alleys with a proposal that completely shuns vertigo to settle into a solemnity as monolithic as it is harmless. Far from offering a truly renewing look at the closed territory, the director consolidates here a morbid fondness for claustrophobic universes that no longer smells like cinematic risk, but rather like an exercise in academic style, predictably self-complacent and devoid of authentic blood. The alibi of childhood innocence unfolds throughout the runtime as an impenetrable protective shield to avoid any real questioning of its flimsiest dramatic premises.

The fundamental problem eating away at the film from its very first moments stems from the systematic aseptization of the conflict through the eyes of its youngest protagonists, a device that does not seek genuine empathy with the spectator but rather the moral legitimization of a narrative that morbidly revels in its own fake misery. We witness a perpetual choreography of prolonged silences and blank stares that pretend to accumulate mounting tension scene after scene, but merely succeed in alienating the audience through a cold and inaccessible mise-en-scene made of papier-mache. This is a cinema that exhibits a terrified panic before the unpredictable chaos of real life and prefers to voluntarily lock itself within its own museum architecture, where each meticulously calculated shot functions as an incessant and unbearable reminder that we are before a work gazing navel-gazingly at its own belly button without caring in the slightest who is sitting on the other side of the screen.

Formal Rigidity as an Unshakable Dogma of Faith

The direction of actors oscillates perpetually and aimlessly between the strictest expressive containment and absolute hieratism, forcing a talented cast to navigate sequences where words are entirely superfluous yet gestures fail to fill the void with dramatic meaning. Claudio Catano and Alejandro Buitrago deploy a remarkable physical presence on screen that clashes frontally, in an almost tragic manner, against the inanity of psychological motivations barely sketched out in passing by a script penned by the filmmaker himself, who confuses dryness with mystery. Matias Nicolas's camera pursues the characters through natural spaces with a geometric insistence so pronounced that it ends up exhausting any trace of interpretive spontaneity, transforming the majestic natural landscapes into an aseptic set where nothing can ever be stained by authentic mud or real sweat.

The Unbearable Weight of the Music and Narrative Vacuity

The sound design and musical compositions signed by Camilo Sanabria operate throughout the runtime like an emotional pneumatic drill that warns us in a heavy-handed and obvious way at what exact moment we should feel existential anguish or abstract melancholy. This absolute lack of trust in the spectator's intelligence completely nullifies any hint of genuine suspense and reduces the purported mystery to an endless accumulation of gloomy prints that succeed one another without true internal necessity or dramatic progression to justify them. The production backed by Rhayuela Films evidences financial muscle and a technical finish polished to the point of boredom, but entirely lacks the visceral pulse necessary to turn rural tragedy into something more than a tourist postcard designed exclusively to please the selection committees of European festivals most disconnected from popular reality.

The best

• Actor presence: The commendable physical commitment of Claudio Catano and Alejandro Buitrago as they attempt to sustain the gravity of their characters against wind and tide.
• Cinematography: The methodical work of Matias Nicolas in composing frames of impeccable symmetry and indisputable formal craftsmanship.

The worst

• Pretentious solemnity: The absolute incapacity to connect emotionally with the spectator due to an excessively hermetic and cold overall tone.
• Child instrumentalization: The cynical and manipulative use of the minors' perspective turned into a moral alibi to justify the boredom.
• Scarcity of risk: A flat script that repeats formulas worn to exhaustion without contributing a single truly renewing idea to the genre.

The Verdict of Claqueta Acida

The Awakening confirms with painful evidence that formal preciosity, when completely emptied of narrative urgency and human truth, inevitably becomes a mausoleum of prestigious insignificance. Jaime Osorio Marquez constructs a storefront object as polished as it is sterile, a gloomy postcard that confuses containment with absolute emptiness and cinematic rigor with the purest slumber. The spectator leaves the screening room with the disconcerting and bitter sensation of having attended a solemn funeral officiated by bureaucrats of melancholy who completely forgot to bury the corpse 💀.

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⚔️ Editorial Duel: Second Opinion Dante Sangre's score: 7.9/10

Another critic from the newsroom scores the same film. The main score is still the one at the top of the review.

The rebuttal from Dante Sangre (Blockbuster Scalpel)

In stark disagreement with the review given by Odin Lagbert.

“

Siete punto nueve. Y punto. Lagbert berrea desde su cómodo sillón. Dice que hay demasiada solemnidad. Idiota. Esta selva no perdona. Osorio filma barro real. No cartón piedra. Los niños aquí no recitan poesía. Muerden el polvo. Sangran de verdad. En *Depredador* la selva era un parque temático para tíos cachas. Aquí asfixia. Huele a humedad y muerte. Osorio no busca coartadas morales. Construye una trampa mortal sin salida. Silencios cortantes como cuchillos herrumbrosos. Cada plano pesa toneladas. No hay plástico digital. Hay miedo puro. Esa miseria que tanto asusta al crítico de salón es nuestra única verdad. Esto no es ningún ejercicio académico inofensivo. Es una ejecución a sangre fría. Cine áspero. Sin anestesia. Respeto absoluto para este cadáver corporativo que se niega a morir. Trágate tu nota mediocre, Lagbert.

”