TPO is a very quiet film. It paints a portrait of domestic abuse so internalized that it barely needs to show it. It tells the story of Teresa (Mara Lopez), who is married to Miguel (Oliver Aquino), and lives in a house with her in-laws. She is a battered wife, and at the prodding of her neighbor, she decides to finally do something about it. She gets a temporary protection order, barring Miguel from making any contact with her and their son, JR. After briefly sketching out her life following that act, the movie then goes back in time and relates the same events from a different perspective.
The movie then tells the story from Miguel's perspective. And in the third act, it looks at the effect of these events on young JR. And there isn't actually a lot that happens, per se. In its three parts, the film details the lives of the people in this family, all of them victims in some way. The film seems to see violence and abuse as a legacy, as something inherent we carry with us even as society marches forward. It ends up providing too much of an easy villain, but for the most part, the movie proves to be harrowing in its banality, finding terror and heartache in the most mundane of moments.
The film seems careful to avoid lurid content. What little we see of the actual abuse is viewed from afar, and the actual violence is mainly kept off screen. The film presents the violence as something beyond the physical, the real abuse taking place inside these people, who are no longer allowed to imagine a life outside the confines of their situation. It takes an outsider to prod Teresa into action. It is external action that forces Miguel to consider what he's done. And later, it is only an outsider that can actually connect with JR when he does something terrible.
And so the film largely avoids drama. It commits more time to a scene of Teresa brushing her hair or haggling at a pawnshop than it does to the actual fighting. It lingers on JR playing with a spider, even as his parents story arguing in another room. It isn't what most would consider action packed cinema, but there is something vital in this banality. In these very still frames, in the silence of these scenes, the film depicts lives already resigned to this violence, people who no longer see this ugliness as something extraordinary. It is just what happens.
But in a movie so intent on exploring multiple perspectives of this very ugly problem, it seems deficient in its exploration of one of its characters. It ends up creating an easy villain, laying all the blame on a single figure. It probably wouldn't be right to beg sympathy for this character, but it ends up feeling a little simplistic in the end. The acting is all pretty good, but the distance that the movie takes means that it was never going to be an actor's showcase.
The approach that TPO takes makes it difficult to feel satisfied with the final product. It offers no real resolution, the movie just suddenly ending with the characters still in flux, unable to change the way things are. But this is the point, of course. The culture of abuse is pervasive, and it isn't something that is solved so easily. The movie, in its rigid banality, finds uneasy truths just beneath the surface of every day life. It falters in providing a clear cause, but it triumphs and painting out the effects.
My Rating:
