Ema adopted Polo. And when she didn’t like the fit, she gave him right back.
So begins one of the stranger stories I’ve encountered in some time.
Gastón fights with Ema about it. Though hubby directs her dance troupe, he takes no responsibility for what just happened. The snipes are as weak as they are disingenuous—hinting at what sorts of people would abandon a young soul, and why.
Our lead herself may have been adopted, maintaining to this day a disturbingly intimate relationship with her family. She considers freedom to be life’s ideal; dance and sex, interchangeable expressions of it. Gastón is also out-there, but interested in countering what he perceives to be pop culture’s dumbing down of society. The average person in Valparaíso, Chile—let alone Polo’s social worker—has trouble dealing with such idealists. She is dismissed as seedy and naive; he, spacey and gay.
So what’s this couple, a veritable middle finger to their community, to do next? Sleep around; create, for sure. But the crux of this movie is Ema’s devious, intricate plan to get Polo back. The story, if nothing else, is original.
It’s also worth a watch if you care about thoughtful and beautiful construction of movie scenes. As Ema ensnares more and more people in her plan, the screen pulsates with life. Every image (like a golden sunset, or a pupil shining bright against the grey odds of big city life) is vivid and meaningful. And then there’s the music. Strings discover an unexplainable emotion just before sliding into another one; reggaetón bass thumps our already overbeating hearts.
But pretty in pieces is not enough. The dialogue is too often unnaturally expository, taking us right out of the story. A strange choice for a movie that otherwise moves at a snail’s pace, introducing heavy ideas slowly and deliberately. And though having us think through things like sex, alienation, dependency, and incest is laudable, the story leaves so much open to interpretation that I fail to find a moral in it.
Perhaps that was intentional. Ema is undoubtedly a movie to confuse over and marvel at. But enjoy it or learn from it, I did not.