All Is Vanity
Marcos Mereles’ mystery-fantasy, his first feature, is ambitious but ill-judged.
Marcos Mereles, whose first feature film this is, is now based in London but was born in Argentina. In view of that, one is encouraged to ask if in creating All Is Vanity (he is its director, writer and producer) Mereles had in mind one of his country's greatest names, Jorge Luis Borges. Turn to the Wikipedia entry on that author and you will find this description of his literary preoccupations: ‘Time, infinity, mirrors and labyrinths’. It is not so far from what Mereles seeks to offer in his film, one which sets out to blend genres and to keep the audience asking questions. But, if that is evidence of ambition, there is little in the film to suggest that Mereles is possessed of the talent to bring it off. The best that can be said of his work is that the shooting style adopted for this film has a decided individuality: he does not reject camera movement but, nevertheless, frequently opts to hold a particular set-up at some length leaving any movement to the actors. In that respect his film does have a signature, but otherwise it offers little of interest.
The opening of All Is Vanity takes the form of a prologue which precedes four titled sections. Here the camera is well used to establish the atmosphere of an empty set, a warehouse that has been used for a fashion shoot. We don't see any people but we do hear voices and what they say indicates that they have been involved in some disturbing event that took place there. This introduction could be one to a standard thriller of some kind since it leads into a narrative which appears to be depicting the events hinted at by those voices. A photographer (Sid Phoenix) arrives at the warehouse with an intern (James Aroussi) and a little later the makeup girl (Rosie Steel) turns up. There is then quite a long wait before the model (Isabelle Bonfrer) joins them and, indeed, little of note happens during the film’s first half-hour.
I have the impression that critics are taking it to be wholly appropriate to mention that one member of the team eventually disappears but not to divulge any more details about the plot. That seems the proper thing to do because All Is Vanity aims to take the viewer by surprise twice over. First, there is a development which is of the kind which is most aptly described as pulling the rug from under your feet and then, much later, there is a switch into a genre that has not been hinted at previously. The first of these two moves comes over less as a twist than as a trick and there’s also a sense that Mereles thinks that he is being very clever. But the fact is that the same device was used in 2020 by an American filmmaker whose film, initially at least, had a screenplay blessed with far better characterisations. Here, the cast are the prisoners of the script which, even when things develop, fails to find anything very interesting to say about the people involved.
As for the film’s final stretch, there is no preparation for the change to a different genre and consequently it feels tacked on and ineffective. En route to that there are some postmodern touches, but these too are now relatively old hat. Furthermore, one can even go back to certain works of a much earlier period written by J.B. Priestley which illustrate how to create a sufficiently involving set of characters and then to introduce a change of approach so adeptly that the audience are fully carried along. In contrast to that, the level of the writing by Mereles quite fails to do that and is more likely to lead to rejection by the audience. Proudly proclaiming this ‘a Marcos Mereles film’, its creator seems blithely unaware of his limitations. It is, admittedly, the first time that he has written a piece in English, but that hardly excuses the failure. The vanity on display in All Is Vanity is surely his own.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Sid Phoenix, James Aroussi, Isabelle Bonfrer, Rosie Steel, Christopher Sherwood, David Sayers, Sam Halpenny, Jonathan Harden.
Dir Marcos Mereles, Pro Marcos Mereles, Screenplay Marcos Mereles, Ph Murat Ersahin, Ed Damian Tetelbaum, Music Tristan Seewer, Costumes Phoebe Shu-Ching Chan.
Malbec Films-Verve Pictures.
72 mins. UK. 2021. UK Rel: 14 October 2022. Cert. 15.
