Berlinale 2024 review: La hojarasca (Macu Machin)

La hojarasca is short in length but makes up for it in strength.”

There is always a perfect moment of calm before an eruption. And when it is about cinema, as in Macu Machin’s film La hojarasca, that creates the perfect storm. The film, which had its world premiere in the Forum section, centres around three sisters, sharing some physical likenesses but as different in character as they make them, coming together on the Canary Islands. It is clear from the very first shots of Macu Machin’s debut feature documentary that this producer/former editor, now turned filmmaker, has some personal investment in the story she is telling. Which is a good thing, a very good thing.

The three sisters — named Carmen Machín, Elsa Machín, Maura Pérez Machin — share the filmmaker’s last name but also a special bond with each other. Carmen has been taking care of the property their parents left them, an almond grove on an island with an active volcano rumbling nearby. Maura has some developmental issues (since birth, we find out from photographs), and Elsa is her full-time caretaker — both living a plane-ride distance away. Among the three they share probably two hundred years in age, and even the energetic Carmen seems to have the beginning stages of Parkinson’s disease or possibly essential tremor, her head shaking in the same unmistakable way Kate Hepburn did for most of her later life.

What is remarkable here, yet is never pointed out in the film, is that these three women clearly lack a male presence in their lives — though one could certainly be useful in keeping the overgrown property in shape (hence the title; ‘hojarasca’ means ‘undegrowth’). Instead, Carmen, Elsa and Maura occupy a special place in the universe reserved for women whose resolve and ability to overcome adversity proves too challenging, perhaps even emasculating for the male gender. But Machin, the filmmaker at the helm of this languid, soul-stirring documentary, isn’t afraid to linger on the marked, wrinkled faces of her subjects, with each groove providing a roadmap to understanding their lives and strength. And in those roadmaps, we also can find our own selves, if we let the film wash over us and take over our consciousness.

At barely over an hour running time, La hojarasca is short in length but makes up for it in strength. The central volcanic eruption, which occurs just as the sisters have finally come to a resolve about their shared inheritance, felt as powerful as the atom bomb explosion at the centre of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. So powerful that you could feel the heat on your face. Considering I watched Nolan’s film in IMAX as opposed to Machin’s doc, that says a lot about her skilful use of sound and images to convey her message. And that message is that family is everything, and with the help of those we love we can conquer it all. Even when living on the edge of a volcano.

Image copyright: El Viaje Films