Customer Reviews

pvc-1

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PVC-1 is a thriller film based on the true story of Elvia Cortés, a 55 year old woman from La Palestina, Boyacá, Colombia, who in May 15th, 2000 had a pvc bomb attached around her neck after she refused to pay a $15 million pesos ($7500 dollar) extorsion fee to allegedly FARC rebels.
This movie was selected and shown in the 2007 Cannes festival where it won the "Award of the City of Rome" award and has won other awards in festivals around the world.
The movie was financed, directed and shot by Greek-Colombian director Spiros Stathoulopoulos, who spent 3 months, 5 hours a day of physical training to endure the 85 minute long, one-take steady-cam digicam shot that became the movie.

This is what makes the movie so remarkable, it is a single camera, 85 minute long shot that never lets go, no edits, no multiple takes, no gimmicks, just pure acting. Being a one shot movie, this means everything had to be carefully planned and acted without mistakes.

Highly recommended.

The few reviews I've read of this movie were very positive and focused on the fact that it consisted of (or seemed to consist of) one long tracking shot. It looked as though it were shot on film as opposed to video but I know of no 85 minute rolls of film, and the director is listed as the editor, and there is no need for an editor if there is no editing. So somewhere there must have been some very clever and subtle editing going on.

That being said, this isn't a very good movie. A farming family is set upon by bad guys demanding large sums of cash. The farmer says they don't have it so said bad guys proceed to put a PVC collar, containing a bomb, around the wife's neck and say they'll be back for the cash in some certain amount of time. The farmer, wife and daughter proceed to call the officials and go to meet them to get the bomb diffused.

Though this is a clever exercise it is unnecessary and the story could have been handled better using more conventional film making methods. The action and dialogue are sparse and there seemed to be too many times where the camera would pull away from the action only to return again. It felt as though they were stretching the clock. There was one scene where time was taken out so the victim could relieve herself. All this did was pad the clock. And though there were a couple of tense moments, much more tension could have been created with real editing.

The ending was also pretty terrible. I'm not arguing what happens there, merely the way in which it was handled. I got a decent enough taste for the lead characters but it made me want to know more. All it did was drive home the point that this would have been better with a more traditional approach.