Patagonia Review

• 10th Jul 2011

Patagonia is the film that brings Marc Evans back to his homeland of Wales and to his native language. Successful Welsh language films are a rarity to say the least with the likes of Hedd Wyn the exception not the rule. Featuring Welsh stars such as Matthew Rhys and Duffy, the film has proved a substantial hit at the Welsh box office.

The film splits its narrative between two road stories featuring two women. The first follows Cerys (Marta Lubos) and Alejandro (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) as they travel to Wales so Cerys can visit the farm that her mother lived in before leaving for Patagonia. The other story follows a Welsh photographer Rhys (Matthew Gravelle) and his girlfriend Gwen (Nia Roberts) as they journey to Patagonia, with Gwen attempting to figure out her own future.

Since the brilliant Welsh music documentary Beautiful Mistake, director Marc Evans has been focusing on projects outside of Wales. His return is a genuine attempt to connect the homeland itself with its rather strange colony Y Wladfa in Patagonia, South America. The first settlers arrived towards the end of 1865 in an attempt to move away from any English influence in their lives. By today many young Welsh speakers travel to the country intrigued to experience a Wales away from Wales.

Patagonia  attempts to paint a vast picture of a nation that, although small in terms of land mass, has a spirit that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean. For Cerys, her need to visit the land of her mother is almost tangible thanks to a superb performance by Marta Lubos. The emotional undercurrent that fuels Cerys’ journey home is the highlight of the film as it contains just the right amount of pathos, comedy and drama to make it believable. Rhys and Gwen’s journey into Patagonia is colder, partly due to their strained relationship but also due to the entire storyline being utterly overwhelmed by the landscape.

Landscape plays a critical part in this film with the Welsh countryside proving far more forgiving than the staggering beauty of South America. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan provides a visual feast in Patagonia that even Terrance Malick would struggle to exceed. The location work for the South American leg is simply astounding with practically every scene ravishing for the eye. Against this remarkable backdrop the story of the struggling relationship between Rhys and Gwen and her affair with Mateo (Matthew Rhys) failed to grab my heart. The actors aren’t to blame for this; the same thing happened in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre Wrath of God where  the vast nature of the Amazon rainforest simply overwhelmed everything. Only the epic performance of Klaus Kinski can rise above such an incredible visual tapestry as photographed in Aguirre. Patagonia has the same visual feel but sadly the cast lacks the size of Kinski’s ego which is required to excel in such extreme circumstances.

The adventure in Wales itself is a lot lighter affair as Cerys and Alejandro travel around several farms attempting to find her roots. There’s a nice line in comedy and the capturing of  the backwaters of Wales as somewhat desperate and depressing areas. Then there’s Duffy making her screen debut as the love interest Sissy. She actually gives a nice little performance and provided the producers with a slice of publicity to drive the film, given her musical success.

This is the most relevant Welsh language film for a very long time, much praise must go to Marc Evans for attempting such a grand scale project.  Linking narratives over continents is far from easy with films such as Babel feeling overlong and uninspiring. Patagonia will undoubtedly be played across Wales for many years to come with much success. This is a Welsh film that dares to dream of international success and recognition, something sorely lacking in today’s recession devastated Wales. His music documentary Beautiful Mistake captured a moment when Welsh recording artists dominated the UK scene. Evans is possibly the most important Welsh director of all time and Patagonia is thus far his most significant film.

The DVD is wonderfully presented by Verve and funnily features a travel ad for Argentina which may very well see a slight boom following the success of Patagonia. The extras are sadly limited to a making of documentary which features all the main players talking lovingly about the project. Every aspect of Patagonia has that deep feeling of it being a labour of love for absolutely everyone involved. This is a film that I happily tell everyone about as it made me feel proud to be Welsh again which is a rare thing nowadays.

Aled Jones