Tercer Grado (Geoffrey Cowper, 2015) : Spain

Reviewed by Nathan Pécout. Viewed at Antioch University/SBIFF 2016.

Tercer Grado is the first full-length film by Spanish director Geoffrey Cowper. The movie has, according to Cowper himself, a strong influence from American cinema more than from Spanish cinema, which is visible under various aspects.

The film can be viewed as some sort of modern Western, set in the hot and dry plains of Catalonia instead of the American West. The main protagonist, played by Jesus Lloveras, is an anti-hero, an outlaw who just got out of prison. After witnessing a violent robbery of a security firm truck, he will track the bandits down to steal their loot. The first aspects we have of Lloveras’s character are those of a ruthless man, who mistreats women and whose brother doesn’t want to have anything to do with. But through the film, this outcast will go through a process of redemption. After several knife cuts and a bullet in his back, he eventually goes away with the money, not without the help of the girl he rudely dumped the previous morning. The revelation of his intentions concerning that money and the final plot twist will achieve to redeem himself. These characters (an outlaw anti-hero, a lost girl, bandits) and plot elements (redemption, sacrifice) effectively borrow from the genre of Western.

This imagery is accentuated by several elements of the mise-en-scène. The theme of fire predominates in the film : the burning car at the beginning and at the end, the guns, the car lights, the sunset and the very warm colors (this effect was obtained thanks to filters) go along the visible heat that hammers the characters. These elements are here to create a climate of tension and danger, very similar to the ambiences surrounding classic and modern Westerns. The music also plays an important part : it is composed of slow and mesmerizing guitar licks, recalling the atmospheric tracks of the last Pink Floyd albums. Although it obviously sounds more modern than the classical and most famous Western themes, it has a similar effect of setting a mood evoking a mysterious immensity where danger is lurking everywhere.

By adapting some well-known patterns and elements of design from the Western genre in today’s Spain, Geoffrey Cowper makes of Tercer Grado a modern history of redemption that seduces by its warm design and its enigmatic characters.

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Published:
02.19.16 / 1pm
Category:
Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2016