J Paul Johnson
It may be a hallmark of more than one film genre—melodrama, war, Westerns, film noir, horror—to subject a protagonist to unbearable suffering. Few films do so, so much or so well as The Wait (La Espera), F. Javier Gutierrez’s stunning neo-Western psychodrama. In it, a simple rancher wants for nothing more than to provide a home for his wife and child. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s entered into a domain where their fate is predestined in ways he never could imagine. The Wait makes for an almost unbearable experience as its protagonist endures one tragedy after the next, but it also makes for a stunning, genre-bending descent that plumbs the very depths of madness.
Eladio—played by Victor Clavijo in a gripping, measured performance—is a man of few words. No wonder, in that he is, we learn, illiterate: he can “read” only numbers. It’s a trait that might not matter, given his relatively simple assignment. He’s to operate a ranch owned by a man named Don Francisco (Pedro Casablanc), who we meet at first only in shadow, doling out assignments and favors like a Don Vito Corleone. In exchange for his caretaking, Eladio will have a home for his wife Marcia (Ruth Diaz) and ten-year-old boy, Floren (Moisés Ruiz). In the first of several ominous foreshadowings, Eladio remarks to Don Francisco it will be three years before he allows his boy to fire a gun. Cue the cut, of course, to three years later.
As Eladio trains Floren in the use of firearms, Don Francisco has contracted with a Don Carlos (Manuel Morón) to rent his ranch for a hunt. Eladio, with Don Francisco’s approval, has determined the land is sufficient for 10 separate stands to be operated at safe distance from each other; Don Carlos, meanwhile, offers Eladio a bribe to expand the number to 13—a number too great, surely, for the hunt to be conducted safely. It’s a deal that proves too attractive to Marcia to resist, and Eladio meekly resigns himself to accept. With Floren now mature enough to work on the hunt, the event becomes just the first of several tragedies Eladio must endure.
The grief is too much for Marcia to bear, and Eladio, bound for revenge, sets out on a quest to avenge his loss. Yet at each step, it seems, everything goes further awry. He’s not certain who is to blame, and a part of himself grudgingly acknowledges his own complicity in his dilemma. That he can’t read limits the scope of his investigation, and both Don Carlos and Don Francisco prove wily adversaries who may or may not be in cahoots. Even as his desperation mounts, Eladio becomes more and more tortured: with every step he takes forward in avenging his wife and child, he’s further dragged into an almost-unimaginable cesspool of pain and anguish.
Where this is all going when it seems there is no way out for poor Eladio is the genius of The Wait. Gutierrez (The Rings) masters the grimy, desolate landscapes of Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, isolating his dirty, dust-caked protagonist against the elements and foreboding adversaries. But he also takes the film into the territory of folk horror as Eladio descends further and further into madness. At first, his grief is palpable and corporeal, but it becomes more and more the manifestation of hallucinations, ones brought on not by psychosis but instead by a curse. It’s almost as if The Shining, with its caretaker betrayed by the curse of the setting, were unfolding in a Spanish Western.
One’s going to need a strong constitution to bear with Clavijo’s Eladio, the anguish, torment, and torture he endures. Several scenes are flinch-inducingly explicit—never gratuitous, but difficult to watch nonetheless—as Eladio’s family, sanity, and humanity are taken from him step by painful step until there is nothing left. Clavijo’s performance is excellent as a man stripped, ultimately, of everything, even as it becomes all too clear there is no salvation or redemption in store. The forces conspiring against him are simply too great. As long as one doesn’t expect a warmhearted tale of triumph, The Wait is well worth watching, a folk horror tragedy told with style, verve, and truly horrifying visuals as stark as its desolate Andalusian setting.
The Wait is available to rent or own in North American beginning October 4, 2024 on Cable VOD and Digital HD, including Apple TV, Prime Video and Fandango at Home.
