I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You
A few
minutes into this film, which hovers between documentary road-trip
and video-journal, an uncanny event occurs: the screen freezes,
leaving the viewer wondering if a technical glitch has taken place.
Soon enough, however, one realizes that while the foreground has
come to a standstill, a tree in the background is swaying in the
wind. The narrator's voice breaks the stillness, a bird crosses the
sky, and the film resumes its motion.
This
unusual cinematic moment reflects much of what is to come: while
the protagonist is embarked on a journey that requires him to be
constantly on the move, his mental and psychological state has
reached a standstill, because of a recently terminated
relationship.
The
protagonist in question is José Renato, a geologist who is
travelling to the scrublands of the Sertão, a semi-arid remote
region in northeastern Brazil. His aim is to analyze tectonics and assess the
potential route of a canal that will be built from the region's
only voluminous river. For some of the area's inhabitants, this
canal signals hope and the possibility of a new future for them.
For those who live near it, however, it means expropriation,
departure and loss. Many places Renato travels through will be
submerged in order to make way for the new waterway; many families
he meets will be relocated.
The
geologist takes advantage of the mapping work to meet some of the
locals whose lands will be requisitioned; he talks to them,
discovers details of their intimate lives, photographs them at
length. Caught in a process of unintentional identification, he
starts to relate to the emptiness and isolation of these people,
which evidently echoes his own.
As the
film progresses, and Renato travels further into the bleak
landscape, venturing into increasingly desolate towns, his
narration takes on a more personal tone; meditations on his grief
and longing for a relationship that has ended take their toll over
work-related thoughts. As he engages in
a one-sided conversation with the wife he misses, Blondie, it
becomes clear that she has left him recently, and he is not yet
over their separation. Unable to bear the loneliness of the barren
terrain any longer, he ventures to a town and indulges in
short-lived encounters with a host of local
girls.
One of these girls, Patti, speaks toRenato's camera of her dream of a "leisure-life."
These two words become a recurring leitmotif, an incantation of
sorts that Jose sings to himself in a hushed voice, over a
background of eerie, piano-led music... as if these two words can
free him of his anguish and sense of
estrangement.
The mix of formats inI Travel Because I
Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You, including Super-8 and DV, gives the film
the feel of a personal travelogue, which of course it is, but one
that is expertly edited. Moving images, stills and narration
proceed on a similar track, driving the film to its haunting,
elegiac conclusion.
I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love
You
was co-directed by Brazilian filmmakers Marcelo Gomes and Karim
Aïnouz. It won several awards at the2009
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, as well as
the Grand Prix at the 22nd Toulouse Latin American Film Festival,
in 2010.
Ziad
Nawfal