Los que desean

Two list of names frame this crisp and lithesome film from Elena Lopez Riera. Over the loudspeaker, the judge of a pigeon-training competition first lists the varyingly fanciful sobriquets – Ford Fiesta, Festival, I’m Unemployed – of the multi-coloured pigeons that have just taken off in a race based not on speed but on desire; the winner will be the pigeon that has managed to come closest to the female that had set off ahead of them. The second litany of names is spoken by Lopez Riera and fades out over the twilight landscapes of southern Spain, where these competitions are held. They are the first names of the pigeon owners who, after several phases of competitive training that are partially mentioned in the film, gather in silence for a two-hour stretch to watch the pigeons fluttering over the fields. The order of these inventories aptly expresses Elena Lopez Riera’s finesse and cunning. To observe the men from her home region, Orihuela, and the tacit pact that binds them, you need to first look in the same direction as they do, to where their desire is turned. By definition, metaphors detach themselves from the things that they denote to briefly hover above them: without hiding anything of what is fundamentally a hunting game, she also greatly heightens all its grace and beauty.

Antoine Thirion