A still from La Practica.
On Monday night Yale Film Archive’s Cinemix series offered a selection that exemplified its description of itself as “stand alone screenings of standout films.” La Práctica (The Practice) — the latest from Argentinian writer/director Martín Rejtman — is the story of a yoga instructor’s interactions with students old and new as he maneuvers his way through his ever-changing world. Presented in conjunction with the Latino and Iberian Film festival at Yale (LIFFY), the event included a post-film Q&A with Rejtman, moderated by LIFFY’s founder and executive director Margherita Tortora.
YFA’s managing archivist Brian Meacham welcomed everyone to “a very special screening” of this film that was announced “somewhat last minute” as part of the schedule, but was highly anticipated by those in attendance. Speaking about Rejtman, Meacham noted that this was his first film in almost a decade, as well as the first work of his made outside of Argentina — though he had been called a “leading light of the New Argentine Cinema” by the New York Film Festival where La Práctica had been screened in the fall of 2023.
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Brian Meacham.
Gustavo, played with a deftness for deadpan by Esteban Bigliardi, is the yoga teacher at the center of this story, one that opens with an earthquake — or was it only a tremor? A screen in his studio falls over and knocks out a student, also shaking up Gustavo’s world in a way that sets off a series of events intertwining him with a cast of characters that all eventually become intertwined with one another.
Repetition is a big part of any yoga or meditative practice, and this film uses repetition to highlight the absurdities of life as well as its joys and pains. Rather than follow a linear narrative, the story is presented in vignettes, where each scene feels like a short film unto itself. With minimal movement of the camera and no soundtrack, one feels at times like they are eavesdropping on conversations rather than watching a work of fiction. Gustavo provides narration as certain points, and the viewer becomes engrossed in his next move: will he and his wife Vanesa, also a yoga teacher, work out their separation in therapy? Is former student/pharmacist Laura a possible new love interest? Is his new student a thief or a friend?
And then there is the comedy of it all, a majority of it found in Gustavo being injured repeatedly. Throughout the film he ends up rehabbing and reinjuring it, hiding its severity from his controlling mother who wants him to move back to Argentina from Chile. His stubbornness to continue his lifestyle practice begins to melt away slowly, as it becomes apparent that everyone has their own degree of stubbornness. This offers him insight into what may or may not need to change in his own life to help him heal and move on.
“I realized my world was becoming a life of students and ex-students,” Gustavo says at one point. This realization helps him surmise that he is a student himself, and while practice may not always make perfect, it does help create new possibilities.
Rejtman’s gift for creating characters that become quickly memorable was a big part of the discussion afterward with Tortora, who called them “deadpan” and “searching” in a story that “wasn’t really linear” but compelling. When asked how he does that, Rejtman answered that he “never has a plot in mind” and that he is “more interested in scenes than themes and plot.”
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Tortora and Rejtman take questions from the audience
Reijtman talked about how he also practices yoga and sent the characters to a yoga retreat in Chile like he used to do, but chose Chile as the location for the film because he “wanted to hear different sounds, use different actors faces, and have space to breathe different air.”
When asked if he lets his actor improvise, he answered that his text is “very precise” for his films, “the words and speeds and pauses and rhythm, everything is very choreographed,” adding that “humor has to do with precision.”
He also added that he prefers his camera to be “objective,” choosing to not move it a lot and choosing to not use music. Which Tortora added makes one feel like a “voyeur” when watching the film. When he answered that his favorite directors were Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, and Buster Keaton, one could see their influence on them. Rejtman spoke about how he has always tended to “observe and not participate” throughout his career, and though he was “more quiet” in his earlier films, he started using more dialogue, more humor appeared, and he also became “less interested in making a statement with style.”
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Rejtman.
“All the characters are just the way they are,” he said when asked about his vision. This, it seems, is the beauty of his observational films, his allowing the viewer to see these people as they are, in turn letting us see how we are, and how our choices — as well as our refusal to make certain choices — can make or break us. At one point in the film, Laura says to Gustavo that “thousands of possibilities open up to us.” It becomes an important lesson for him, and everyone else, to learn.
YFA has four more films on its roster for the spring semester, the details of which can be found on its website. LIFFY is also presenting the Colectivo Cine Mujer, films by Sonia Fritz of Puerto Rico and Rosa Martha Fernandez of Mexico on April 10 and 11. More information about that can be found on the LIFFY website.