Language and sounds trigger idyllic childhood recollections in Meritxell Colell Aparicio’s deeply personal, contemplative drama “Far From the Trees,” a handsome reverie blending 4K, Super16mm and archival footage to capture the different textures of memory. Following a Mexican sound artist and her assistant-guide in the Peruvian Amazon as they record nature and indigenous languages, the film is a sensorial road trip of physical and mental meanderings that bisect life choices, parental ties and generational trauma. Aparicio resists drawing conclusions, privileging an experiential approach with its own rhythms, ambitious in scope yet intimate in focus, that could well become an arthouse sleeper.
Already with her first film, “Facing the Wind” (which premiered in the Berlinale’s Forum), the director was exploring the conflicting emotions of adult children in relation to their aging parents, reflecting interior struggles closely connected to place. With “Far From the Trees,” premiering in competition at Locarno, she’s delved further into the psyche and its triggers, negotiating the mind’s tricky associations with both pleasurable and painful memories, and while Aparicio only skirts the way languages form distinct aural and visual concepts, her highly attuned feel for sounds greatly contributes to the film’s impact.
