An in itself totally insignificant poor rural village somewhere in the
middle of nowhere, Mexico: Nothing seems to be happening on the surface,
but everybody thinks Goliat has murdered his girlfriend. The crime is
never investigated though, because the police is corrupt which is why just
ice comes with a price tag. So Goliat is never convicted, but he can never
prove himself innocent, neither. In the meantime, Teresa (Teresa
Sanchez) is left by her husband for another woman, and she tries at the
same time to forget him by throwing away all his cloths and to get him
back by writing him (poorly written) letters. Her son Gabino (Gabino
Rodríguez) works for the army, officially to chase drug traffickers, but
actually there is very little to do and it is a dead end job. But he
chould be happy to have it because there is no other job available in the
village ... Above all, Summer of Goliath seems like an
unfinished film: Narrative conventions are broken here to such an extent
that the film as a whole doesn't seem to gel anymore, that it seems to be
little more than a fragment, a mood piece maybe, with too little narration
to back it up. Consequently, the film ends at a very arbitrary point in
its (non-)narration and fails to resolve anything. That all said, Summer
of Goliath is not an all-bad movie, it's subtly directed, has its
scenes driven by subtle humour, and is very unpretentious in creating its
atmosphere ... one just wisches there was some kind of comprehensible plot
to carry everything.
|