Susan Granger’s review of “The Burning Plain” (Magnolia Pictures)
Acclaimed Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel,” “21 Grams,” “Amores Perros”) climbs into the director’s chair for this romantic mystery about a tormented woman who realizes she must acknowledge the past in order to find redemption.
Near Portland, Oregon, Sylvia (Charlize Theron) manages her chic seaside restaurant with cool composure yet, in private, she leads a turbulent, promiscuous sex life, engages in casual self-mutilation and contemplates suicide. When an enigmatic stranger from Mexico confronts her about guilty secrets she thought were hidden, she’s connected with disparate yet interconnected characters, all of whom are grappling with their own intriguing romantic destinies.
In the New Mexico border town of Las Cruces, a frustrated housewife, Gina (Kim Basinger), embarks on a doomed, adulterous affair with a Mexican farmer (Joaquim de Almeida), in an abandoned trailer that explodes in flames in the remote desert, and two rebellious teenagers, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) and Santiago (JD Pardo), discover furtive, forbidden love in the aftermath the trauma of their respective parents’ sudden deaths. In Mexico, 12 year-old Maria (Tessa Ia) lives happily with her devoted crop-duster father (Danny Pino) and his best friend (Jose Maria Yazpik), until a near-fatal airplane crash changes everyone’s lives.
Propelled by solid female roles, superbly performed by Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, it’s a compelling, if melodramatic, tale of emotional turmoil, particularly between mothers-and-daughters, told in jumbled fragments that make sense only when the non-linear, multi-dimensional parts of the puzzle finally fit together, thanks to Robert Elswit and John Toll’s striking cinematography and Craig Wood’s seamless editing.
For many years, Guillermo Arriaga’s screenplays were helmed by fellow Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, but they had a disagreement about who was the real auteur of “Babel,” so Arriaga decided to go out on his own with this venture. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Burning Plain” is an erotic, haunting 7, filled with fateful concepts and indelible imagery.
