‘Simon of the Mountain’ REVIEW: Falling Short of Potential
‘Simon of the Mountain’ REVIEW: Falling Short of Potential
Has there ever been a more succinct explanation of filmmaking than Martin Scorsese's "Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out"? Federico Luis' Simon of the Mountain, which had its local premiere during November's QCinema International Film Festival, attempts to use what is and isn't in the frame to its advantage.
Lorenzo Ferro as Simon in Simon of the Mountain | Still taken from the La Semaine de la Critique of Festival de Cannes website
However, the film feels like a miscalculation of this delicate balance. Simon of the Mountain should be an interesting film, given that its subject is rarely explored, but it falters in its execution because what's in the frame is far less compelling than what's left out. Most of the film's characters are students at a special needs school, but they're frustratingly kept at a distance. This is unfortunate because the unique is traded for the vague; our window into their world is so narrow that it’s hard to see the point of looking through it in the first place.
That window comes from the titular Simon, a seemingly "normal" young man who imitates the tics and mannerisms of the special needs kids to integrate himself into their community. He starts attending their school out of the blue, much to the confusion of the school’s administration and his own mother. Simon's identity is in crisis—does he continue the disability charade to stay with a group that accepts him, while pushing away his own family, or does he drop the act and resume his normal life? Simon may appear normal to his mother, but perhaps his adopted tics belie a disability that doesn’t manifest in the ways we are typically shown.
Simon of the Mountain is potentially a provocative coming-of-age tale that challenges our preconceptions of how disabilities manifest, but the film spends too long playing a game of "is he or isn't he" before finally landing on a disappointingly binary note. Simon is in every scene and dominates every frame, but he’s left as a total stranger. You get to know as much about him as you would from reading someone’s driver’s license. The film is rooted in his perspective but is uninterested in engaging with what makes it thorny.
Instead of being enigmatic, the rigorous centering of Simon renders him flat because both the character and the world around him are kept as vague as possible to preserve the mystery. This leaves the film without an anchor, floating along for 90 minutes until it hits land.
Pehuen Pedre and Lorenzo Ferro as Pehuen and Simon in Simon of the Mountain | Still taken from the La Semaine de la Critique of Festival de Cannes website
Co-writer-director Federico Luis asks the audience to fill in the blanks, to deduce who Simon is and what the world around him is like from what the film is not saying or showing. It’s certainly not unusual to ask the audience to do some of the work themselves, but it’s hard to fill in the blanks when there’s not enough of a statement around them. The teens and young adults with disabilities who populate the film are at the heart of what makes it unique, but they are sidelined in favor of the hollow, aimless Simon.
It doesn’t help that the film only operates in one gear. The use of handheld camerawork and rough, close-up framing conveys the realistic grittiness the film aims for, but its repeated use, scene after scene, dulls its impact. To be in close-up on someone’s face is to be able to read every microexpression and peer through their eyes. It can be the ultimate dramatic punctuation to a scene — the knockout punch of spilled emotions.
A close-up lets you in. But if everything is in close-up, then nothing is. Its reverse effect, however, is to make a wide shot be the punctuation — but that’s not the case here. The film stays blunt, leaving it up to Lorenzo Ferro’s lead performance as Simon to make a statement the camera cannot. The relentless exercise in closeness is only ever interesting in the film’s final shot, which plays against the wisdom that the mark of a great actor is stillness in a close-up.
Simon of the Mountain was inspired by Luis's experience working with a special needs drama school. While there, one of the students coached him on how to pass a disability exam. That student, Pehuen Pedre, made it into the film playing Simon's closest friend, and the story of his coaching became an actual scene. It is the film's best because it confronts both the messiness and the appeal of Simon's desire to appear disabled when the rest of the film comfortably plays coy. When the story eventually chooses whether he's lying or not, the film comes alive and Simon finally seems to arrive fully formed, with motivations and desires that draw you in. Unfortunately, that's when the film ends.
‘Simon of the Mountain’ was part of QCinema 2024’s lineup as part of the Screen International program.
