Fuckland (2000)

Director:

José Luis Marquès

Writer:

José Luis Marquès (writer)

Release Date:

21 September 2000 (Argentina)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Una película clandestina (A clandestine movie)

Plot:

Fabián, a magician from Buenos Aires, saves his money from weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs, and...

Plot Keywords:

Dogme 95 | Buenos Aires Argentina | Argentina | Independent Film

Cast

Fabián Stratas
Camilla Heaney

Also Known As:

Dogme # 8 - Fuckland (Argentina)
F--kland (USA) (cable TV title)
Fuckland, una película clandestina (Argentina) (promotional title)

Runtime:

Australia:85 min | UK:87 min | USA:84 min

Country:

Argentina

Language:

Spanish | English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Stanley, Falkland Islands

Company:

Atomic Films S.A.

Trivia:

Much of the dialogue between Stratas and Heaney was improvised.

Fascinating, like picking a scab is fascinating

I will confess that once I started watching this movie, it had a hold on me that forced me to watch it through to its conclusion. Quite possibly this was some latent voyeuristic tendency in me that wanted to see our hero get it on with his victim, or maybe fascination that they got funding to make, distribute, and show this film that kept me searching it for merit, or possibly some bizarre wish-fulfillment fantasy that there might be a point at the end of all the pain. But no such luck.

So you are warned to not start watching it in the first place, lest the same thing happen to you. There's nothing here worth wasting your hour and a half on.

The first-person mockumentary and the schtick about Fabian's "quest" to impregnate women of the Falklands comes out even more like a sophomoric (maybe Freshman - high school Freshman, that is) film student project than you might imagine. The effect ends up being both sneering at the local inhabitants (who, other than the two professional leads, are in fact real people) as well as engaging in rather disgusting sexual politics (no matter whether you take it all literally or symbolically, it's pointless and sexist).

The reason I ended up watching it all the way is the same reason that once one starts to pick at a scab, there's an irresistable fascination of continuing to do so until it's completely off, even when you know it's bad for you. You just want to see what happens.

In the end, this is rather dishonest filmmaking, because it seems ultimately to have no moral center, no elucidation of the local political situation, nor any place in the type of political-sexual-personal film universe a la Goddard. In short it's got nothing to say and spends a long time pretending it does. Smug would be the one-word tagline.

I'd suggest the filmmakers rent 'Waiting for Guffman' a few times, or hell, even 'Blair Witch Project' if they want to pursue the schtick with a little more style and a little more genuine emotion. Or at least entertainment value.