From the Wicked Queer Film Festival: ‘The Good Manners’ is an Arresting Ode to Adolescence

At the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge on Apr. 5, the Wicked Queer Film Festival premiered “The Good Manners,” (Dr. Santiago León Cuéllar), a Colombian Spanish-language film that beautifully explores the struggle of growing up, managing difficult family dynamics, and dealing with body confidence and insecurity.

The film is told from the perspective of seventeen-year-old Valerìa (Valeria Lopez), who is visiting her family’s farmhouse for her grandparents’ wedding anniversary. It is here where she deals with the judgment of her overbearing mother (Yanet Osorio), struggles with body insecurities, and reconnects with her sixteen-year-old cousin Sol (Valentina Noreña), who she has not seen in years. Her intermittent voiceover aptly lets the viewer into her head without redundantly stating her feelings. Though her poetic descriptions occasionally become overwrought, overall they contribute to the film’s moody, understated atmosphere, which is further supported by the minimalist, stripped-back soundtrack.

In fact, the film features gorgeous framing throughout, as Cuéllar creates stunning visuals that only enhance the narrative. The use of space whenever the characters venture into the countryside makes the actors look insignificant compared to the beautiful landscapes that surround them, underscoring how small and insecure the main characters feel. Similarly, there is a consistently effective use of unorthodox focus when characters interact: For example, while Valerìa pleads that they need to get back to work before their parents catch them playing around, the camera instead stays tight on Sol as she poses and tries on different hats, revealing both characters’ personalities and how they view themselves. In another scene, the camera stays tight on Valeria as she stews in her feelings while being berated by her mother for wearing a short dress, leaving her mother out of frame until after Valerìa exits the scene. This is a highly evocative technique, and supports the film’s plot light introspective structure.

Though rarely directly confronted, the exploration of Valerìa’s fraught relationship with her mother is done creatively and with nuance. This is best exemplified by a scene where Valerìa and her mother are getting dressed, and Valerìa wears an old dress of her mother’s that is clearly too big for her. Valerìa attempts to open up to her mother, but she makes Valerìa zip up her dress first, refusing to listen. Almost comically, the dress’s large sleeves repeatedly fall down throughout the scene, but Valerìa’s mother simply fixes it without acknowledging the obvious problem with the dress or her daughter’s desperation to be seen.

In this vein, there is perhaps an uncomfortable number of scenes of the teenage lead characters getting dressed and undressed. Though this motif contributes to ideas of how young people see themselves and present themselves to the world, especially when they feel uncomfortable in their own skin, within the first twenty minutes it already feels superfluous and overdone.

This is made clear in a scene where Valerìa asks to see and feel Sol’s tattoo, and in return Sol asks to touch Valerìa’s (almost invisible) scar on her abdomen, which has been a source of insecurity for her throughout the film. Despite being an impactful display of the complicated relationship between Valerìa and Sol, this also comes off as a bit coquettish, especially for Sol. Her character is consistently inscrutable. She vacillates inconsistently between acting considerately and selfishly towards Valerìa, rarely exhibiting any strong emotions.

Though the film is billed as a queer story featuring Valerìa’s “sexual awakening” after spending a week in close quarters with her cousin Sol, it is perhaps disingenuous to do so. The only queer connection in “The Good Manners” is an imagined, passionate kiss between cousins. And even then, this moment is more indicative of Valerìa’s desperate desire for connection and acceptance than any realization of lesbianism.

“The Good Manners” is a visually wonderful film, and is strongest when it luxuriates in the unsaid aspects of complicated familial relationships and the difficulty of growing up without a support system.

— Staff writer Millie Mae Healy can be reached at milliemae.healy@thecrimson.com.