LEAP YEAR/ ANO BISIESTO

Mexico, 2010, 94 minutes, colour.
Directed by Michael Rowe.

Leap year is a very grim film. It is a film about depression, sexual drive, death wish. It focuses on a middle aged woman, a writer, who lives alone. She has a brother who breaks up with his boyfriend. She tries to make out that she is doing better to her family.

However, she spends her time writing, especially at home, going shopping, watching the young neighbours and their sexual life, going out to clubs, bringing home men for anonymous sex.

One night she brings home Arturo. He has sadistic impulses, Laura going along with them. They increase in intensity. She chooses to go along with them. Ultimately, she hopes that she will die in sexual activity with Arturo on February 29. Hence the title.

Arturo visits her. However, she wakes up in the morning, still alive, to begin a new life.

The film was directed and written by Michael Rowe, an Australian writer living in Mexico. The film won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 2010.

1. A Mexican film? Mexican sensibilities? Social and religious background? Class? The writer an Australian, and what he brought to this Mexican story?

2. The title, Nora and her attitude towards a leap year, her life, her impending death?

3. The camera work, fixed camera, not flashy style, making the audience something like a voyeur on Laura’s life?

4. Laura’s apartment? seeing her in the market, her groceries? The window, her bed, her desk, the small kitchen? The natural sounds? A confined space?

5. The market, Laura, her appearance, dowdy, dumpy? The shop, the man, watching, her disappointment?

6. Her, unpacking, the phone calls, to her brother, her mother, trying to impress the mother, her working at the typewriter?

7. Laura, sensual, looking out the window, watching the couple, masturbation, her own nudity? The dress, preparing to go out?

8. The range of men? Explicit sequences? The morning, their leaving, no words, her disappointment?

9. Arturo? Laura picking him up? His appearance, his background, his story, sado-masochism? The encounters with Laura? Her response? Her freely choosing this behavior? Moving to extremes?

10. The fantasies, combined with the reality of her ordinary life?

11. Her brother, his situation? His boyfriend? Coming to the apartment? Her consoling him?

12. The final night, Laura expecting to die?

13. The brother, Arturo, her waking up in the morning, March 1?

14. Some of ultimate hope? Laura and her going to the depths, depression? The bleakness of her life? The final glimmer of hope?