Ardor

Ardor

Gael Garcia Bernal and Alice Braga are two artists with immense charm and even depth the perfect onscreen couple, one would think. But not so fast. “Ardor” doesn’t waste them. That would be impossible for a visually sumptuous sort of contemporary eco Western (it’s less complicated than it sounds, I promise) from Argentine director Pablo Fendrik. What chemical reaction they try to set off never quite comes to a boil.

Braga plays Vania, daughter of the owner of a large tobacco farm. In the nearby forest, three tetchy brothers who happen to be a few inches shy of being true mercenaries skulk and loom and wait to pounce. Out of the Amazon emerges Bernal, silent at least half the time and maybe supernaturally blessed all over his tattooed self; in any case, he’s kind of unkillable. (A text that appears at the start of the movie refers to pagan rituals performed in Latin America to protect land from harm.) The stable presence of Kai he’s never called by name but is listed as such in the credits doesn’t prevent disaster: The farmer dies; Vania gets taken hostage.

In fairness, during this disaster Kai does hang back more than your average conventional hero might be expected to do; part of the enigma is supposed to be who he is eventually we guess or something like that. But soon enough he is on her trail and their trail, because bad guy bros whose interplay is macho rote (the older brother feeds bromides about how one becomes a man to the most potentially trigger-happy one) are working for wannabe land grabbers doing deforestation or some such thing. Not only is Kai for Vania; he’s also for all the animals in all the land: At one point he meditates by a particularly lush section while an ocelot or something sits there and regards him peaceably.

Anyway, soon enough Kai is freeing Vania, tricking the bad guys, and declining to kill them except when he absolutely must. So what have we got here? Sergio Leone meets Werner Herzog meets “Puma Man”? Not quite. Julián Apezteguia shoots the heck out of it; there are a couple effective jungle and tobacco field action scenes; and there’s just something about Braga, whose hair goes from curly to straight depending on how dry the day is (or whatever), anyway she can steam up any camera lens in any century.

But Fendrik pushes a little too hard for mysticism among other things, this movie has more unmotivated dissolves than I don’t know what. It’s like dissolve-dissolve-dissolve-dissolve, so many you’d think Fendrik had made a bet with somebody that he could put more dissolves in his movie than anyone before him ever did without getting cold called by the police or something.

Also: There’s not much room for humor between Bernal and Braga. They smolder well together up to a point but seem compelled to withhold their sparkle beyond that point (especially her). And yes of course Fendrik has statements to make about nature and balance and manhood blah blah blah. The problem is that “Ardor,” good-looking as it is, falls short on two crucial levels: It’s neither profound enough nor narcotic enough to justify or transcend its self-seriousness. As motion pictures go, they’re both pretty hot but the fire never catches.

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