VIA RIO is an ode to our human desire for relationship. The film tumbles through a series of relationships woven around one woman's narration of her parents' marriage. This woman (played by Lilian Mafra) is a fresh and fecund personality who relates the story of her mother's infidelities while sitting naked and pregnant in a garden. Interspersed around this narrative are a number of other scenes which feeds the complex nature of human interaction. Interaction that is sometimes comic, sometimes lonely but, as the very pregnant Mafra indicates, inevitably part of life.
What are Ilona Herfurt and her boyfriend Dietmar Freistrath doing in the old mine? Where does the money come from that her son Jimmy finds under the newspaper? Where have the unique and intricately carved works of art, often passed down for generations, disappeared to from the village in the Ore Mountains? What do the carver Gerlach and his foster daughter llona have to do with it? Questions upon questions that are burning under the detective's nails.
Jessica's promising debut as a young artist is shattered by a sudden and violent death. She escapes into a restless succession of journeys whose encounters along the way bring humour, some comfort, but also danger.
Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo's deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years.
The weekly brass band rehearsal is an enjoyable, light-hearted occasion. Then Mathew, the conductor, introduces James, a newcomer to the village, who is an enthusiastic bandsman from the north, where they do these things properly.
Georgia Benfield, at her wit's end, loses control and begins physically abusing her elderly mother, just as Georgia had been abused herself as a child.
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Have you watched Via Rio yet? What did you think about it?
