I can’t say that I was completely connected with all the stories presented in the drama Confesiones Chin Chin. The first sequence showed a couple in beautiful and natural engagement with their bodies, and then the film revealed its true nature. Carolina Perelman‘s deep character study of queer culture in Madrid is limited to what happens inside a bar. On rare occasions, the camera leaves the bar, and when it does, the film tends to lose its focus. Luckily, the camera always finds a way back home where it belongs. In the safe haven that is the place where everybody knows your name, and who you are.
Confesiones Chin Chin is based on the script by Perelman and Samuel Rotter, two artists who have found a worthy story in the challenge of making the film compelling. It’s not an easy film to watch when it steps outside its boundaries, but again, the director’s statement is that ambitious. She wants to cover the perspective that makes the underworld that she’s exploring a vast universe.
The film follows Vicente and Lolo, two queer actors who meet their friends Sofia and Roberto, and others in a bar in Madrid called Cazador. The discussions are colorful, deep and almost directionless because it’s how their friendship works. It’s a sharp depiction of a culture that’s visible in some parts of the world where having a drink doesn’t need a reason. You feel like talking with your friends, and a tiny bar is the perfect place for you to open up.
Except for the first sequence, Confesiones Chin Chin doesn’t need to experiment with more characters and their confessions. The movie loses some of its steam when it centers around an artist with an anger issue that I just didn’t find appealing at all (even if I lived in a similar society for 12 years). When it focuses on a woman who’s not very happily married, it also explores another insight that needs further expansion. But when Perelman decides to twirl around the camera in the bar and focuses on expressions of the human soul, the film becomes a gem that will remind you of the experimental shades of drama from the 1970s. The difference is that when nothing happens in Confesiones Chin Chin, the film is actually better.
When the credits rolled in Confesiones Chin Chin, I felt that I had spent a couple of minutes with interesting friends that I wanted to know better, beyond the typically superfluous party at a bar. Not many films do that, and to a lesser extent, films that speak directly about a culture I’m not part of. For that, I celebrate Perelman and Rotter and their compelling depiction of a universe that deserves to be heard beyond the inhumane displays of homophobia that are so harmful to this world.
Film critic. Lover of all things horror. Member of the OFCS. RT Approved Critic.
