The Focus Pull Film Journal The Focus Pull Film Journal
The Focus Pull Film Journal The Focus Pull Film Journal
  • Full Issues 
  • Reviews 
  • Features 
  • OUR TEAM
  • Info.
    • OUR TEAM
  • Content
    • Full Issues 
      • Issue #01
      • Issue #02
      • Issue #03
      • Issue #04
      • Issue #05
      • Issue #06
      • Issue #07
      • Issue #08
      • Issue #09
      • Issue #10
      • Issue #11
      • Issue #12
      • Issue #13
      • Issue #14
      • Issue #15
      • Issue #16
      • Issue #17
      • Issue #18
      • Issue #19
      • Issue #20
      • Issue #21
      • Issue #22
      • Issue #23
      • Issue #24
      • Issue #25 - Horror Week
      • Issue #26
      • Issue #27
      • Issue #28
      • Issue #29
      • Issue #30
      • Issue #31
      • Issue #32
      • Issue #33
      • Issue #34
      • Issue #35
      • Issue #36
      • Issue #37
      • Issue #38
      • Issue #39
      • Issue #40
    • Reviews 
      • (All Reviews)
      • Action Adventure
      • Animation
      • Biography/History
      • Comedy
      • Crime
      • Documentary
      • Drama
      • Foreign
      • Horror
      • Romance
      • Sci-Fi
      • Thriller
    • Features 
      • (All Features)
      • Bonding with Bond
      • Double Exposures
      • Essays
      • Event Coverage
      • Lists
      • New to Netflix
      • News
      • Retrospectives
    • OUR TEAM
REGISTER
@
LOGIN
Features
2
0
previous article
Review: Chef
next article
Top 10 Closing Shots In Cinema History

Chicago Critics Film Festival 2014: 10,000 km

by Taylor Sinople on May 12, 2014
Overall Rating
6.0
6.0
Critic Rating
You have rated this

Long distance relationships have seemingly become more viable every decade of the last century as the power of telecommunications (seemingly) draws people together. The monthly letter, the weekly telegram, the nightly phone call, the daily email, and the hourly text message. Then: webcams, Skype, FaceTime, anytime, anywhere – press the button, see your lover. How could you feel distance when you can be that close?

Before ten thousand kilometers of land and sea separate Alex (Natalia Tena) and Sergi (David Verdaguer), we first meet them in their bed one morning in Barcelona. They’re having passionate sex, trying for a baby. Afterwards, Sergi prepares breakfast while Alex receives an email that will change everything. She’s been offered a year-long artist residency in Los Angeles. He says, “you can’t go,” but knows that she must. She, too, knows that this opportunity is the “last train” for her photography career. So she goes, and Alex and Sergi become two people in two apartments, left with the blessing and burden of technology to keep them together.

It’s probably reasonable to guess that director Carlos Marques-Marcet has some experience with long distance relationships. Before “10,000 km” (his debut feature), he shot the story as a thirty-minute short titled “Same Place, Same Time.” Two years before that, he completed “5456 Miles Away,” another short. Marques-Marcet has spent some time thinking about technology and romance, and with this expansive, 99-minute exploration of a couple’s shaky relationship, he proves that these are ideas worth thinking about.

Alex and Sergi’s comfortable domesticity is established in the film’s daunting 25-minute opening shot. This is your chance to be sucked into the film, if you ever will be. The focus puller does one hell of a job at managing the reframing as the camera follows the couple as they make love, shower, and eat breakfast, all the while carrying on conversations in this single take that offers close-ups and smart wide shots without a single edit. In a delightful capsizing of this initial technique, the film following the opening shot is broken up into a series of very brief vignettes that allow us to rapidly pop into Alex and Sergi’s lives after she moves to L.A. Think “500 Days of Summer:” a title comes on screen at the start of each snippet to establish how long they have been separated. Day 17. Day 84. Day 116.

At first, our access to their lives is limited to their interactions via video chat. Their unique methods of holding on to some form of intimacy despite their distance provide a lot of warmth to the picture. They stage a formal dinner date and sit at their dining tables across from the computer.  But the longer they’re away from one another, the more the identity of their relationship withers. Slowly, the story of Alex and Sergi is overtaken by the story of Alex and her photography. As her year-long project takes shape, it begins to reveal the emotional weight of her choice to come to America.

Cinematographer Dagmar Weaver-Madsen impressively choreographs the complexities of shooting a romance anchored by technology. We see everything – computer screens, photographs, webcam feeds – it’s all brought directly onto the screen. But for all the technical prowess exhibited in “10,000 km,” it’s still a definite watch-checker. South by Southwest awarded the film an award for Best Acting Duo in 2014, but while Tena (Nymphadora Tonks in “Harry Potter,” and Osha on “Game of Thrones”) and Verdaguer perform well and deserve recognition for their carrying of this two-person drama, it can’t be avoided that they are a pair of very dull characters.

Have we been spoiled by larger-than-life characterizations? Alex and Sergi feel at times too real, like the arguing friends that you wish would handle their business in private. So while this minimalist piece doesn’t need to go so far as incorporating a kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, both characters, with a hundred minutes to spare, still should have ended up a bit more defined and memorable. Read as a film essay on ultra-contemporary romance, “10,000 km” is an important dissertation. Just don’t expect this good-but-not-vibrant film to be a hit on date night.

Continue Reading Issue #2

Language

Spanish

Release

Film festival circuit

Runtime

1 hr. 39 min.

Genre

Drama, Romance

MPAA Rating

Not Rated

Director

Carlos Marques-Marcet

Cast

Natalia Tena, David Verdaguer

(All Features), (All Reviews), Chicago Critics Film Festival 2014, Drama, Event Coverage, Features, Issue #02, Reviews, Romance
10000kmCarlos Marques-MarcetDavid Verdaguerlong distance relationshipsNatalia TenaSXSW Winners
10000km, Carlos Marques-Marcet, David Verdaguer, long distance relationships, Natalia Tena, SXSW Winners
About the Author
Taylor Sinople
Taylor Sinople
Taylor is a Chicago-based writer and aspiring film historian. He is the editor here at TFP, and has contributed to a number of international publications such as Cinema Scandinavia, PopMatters, and Room 101 Magazine. He can also be found listening to podcasts, researching topics he has little use for, or running after a city bus.
Comments
Leave a reply
Add Comment Register



Leave a Response
Cancel reply

Latest Articles

 
Taylor Sinople Picks – The 17 Best Films of 2017
 
Taylor Sinople Picks: The 16 Best Films of 2016
 
Taylor Sinople’s Top 10 Films of 2015: “The Duke of Bur...
 
8 Films to See at the 51st Chicago International Film Festival
 
Heathers (1988): A “Wobbly” Kind of Beauty

FESTIVAL COVERAGE

View All
 
8 Films to See at the 51st Chicago International Film Festival
 
Every Thing Will Be Fine 3D Review
 
Berlinale 2015: Eisenstein in Guanajuato
 
Berlinale 2015: Sworn Virgin
 
Berlinale 2015: Under Electric Clouds

LISTS

View All
 
Taylor Sinople Picks – The 17 Best Films of 2017
 
SNL40: A Look Back at 40 Years of SNL in Film
 
Six Must-See British Films Opening in 2015
 
Oscars 2015: Ranking the Best Picture Nominees
 
Our 26 Most Anticipated Films of 2015
Tweets by @thefocuspull
  • "Popcorn - check. Soda - check...I have a date with Netflix on Friday night." - Sherry
  • "[…] nails it.” I disagree, and frankly wonder what movies John is talking about. The original G..." - Dear Godzilla Fans: Please Stop Defending that ...
  • "[…] www.thefocuspull.com […]" - Annie Hall
  • "[…] more vibrant monologue or confrontation, like the dinner scene that comes at just the right time ..." - Taylor Sinople's Top 10 Films of 2015
  • "[…] of the year is also the stuff of a best picture winner. With Michael Keaton, hot off praise from ..." - Taylor Sinople's Top 10 Films of 2015
TRENDING ON TFP
   
Try a different filter
© 2014 THE FOCUS PULL FILM JOURNAL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.