Bonsai (2024)

Bonsai

Bonsai (2011) directed and written by Crisitan Jiminez, a Chilean filmmaker who released his first film Optical Illusions in 2009 is about a young good looking literary student with existential thoughts about love, first love and truth vs. fact; still has some post-modern attributes of its predecessor but this adaptation from Alejandro Zambra’s novella of the same name is more ironic on young love being an intimate act between two people who try to keep up appearances while saving face by making up alternative realities.

Julio (Diego Noguera) is at college pretending along with the rest of his class that they have read Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ when he falls in love with Emilia (Natalia Galgani); a quiet, pretty girl who always wears a rock band T-shirt. The two engage in an all-consuming relationship that lasts through university and features gratuitous nudity as well as any other visual element to depict closeness. They read each other one page of great literature every night before going to sleep.

Years later, Julio has long since moved on from their past together and is asked by a world renowned author to help him write his next novel; after losing the job before it starts he lies to Blanca (Trinidad Gonzalez), an adoring neighbor and lover with whom he shares mediocre sex about continuing work on it. A deflated man without direction or even much hope, Julio revisits memories made with Emilia when life was fullest, providing material for the book he must now create.

The comedy in Bonsai comes from how easily these kids lie to themselves and others; he buys her a bonsai tree as gift which her best friend deadpans as having short shelf-life years later she abruptly breaks up with him saying she is dying anyway, we are told this in the opening lines. Later in the film Julio takes the pot plant which has since grown out of shape and nurtures it back into a bonsai.

The film is intelligently structured splitting itself into chapters such as ‘Blood’ ‘Bulk’ ‘Leftovers’, each one detailing our protagonist’s passionate but lazy relationship with literature. Books and sex are the common threads here, Julio being a likable guy whose adventures are funny and engaging to watch. Bonsai is another excellent addition to Jiminez’s increasingly experimental and honest body of work that takes human emotions apart skillfully without any fuss or self-importance.

Watch Bonsai For Free On Gomovies.