NYFF: "Isabella"
Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 11:00PM by Sean Donovan
As part of their series of drive-in events, the New York Film Festival programmed Matías Piñeiro’s latest Shakespeare-influenced drama Isabella alongside Pedro Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton’s delicious queer treasure The Human Voice (previously unpacked by Nathaniel). In some ways this choice makes sense: both films relish in vivid expressions of color, the kind of experiences you would want to have in as close to a theatrical environment as we can get right now. But in terms of intensity and impact the films could not be more different, Human Voice’s sledgehammer playfulness is a misplaced introduction to Piñeiro’s foggy and ultimately disappointing drama.
Isabella is named after the main character of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, one of the bard’s ‘problem plays’ positioned awkwardly between comedy and drama. Isabella displays no proclivities towards the comedic, but it may have internalized the problem play position of being stuck between choices and controlled by doubt...