"The Erection of Toribio Bardelli:" an X-Rated Title for an A+ Art House Comedy

Peru’s Best Foreign Film Academy Award candidate has a title that will raise eyebrows. You might even be fooled into thinking a sex-comedy cheekily sneaked into the competition. But this is not an empty provocation. “The Erection of Toribio Bardelli” is faithful to the triggering plot point but also conceals an expansive meditation on death, family, and the ties that bind. This is a great bait-and-switch stunt. They sell you a Latin “Carry-on” movie and deliver a comedy worthy of the modern Rumanian masters of cinema.

The third feature film from writer-director Adrián Saba begins with elderly Toribio (Gustavo Bueno) unsuccessfully trying to engage in intercourse with a sex worker. “How many times are we going to do this?” asks the dismayed woman. “Every time I pay you,” says Toribio sheepishly and breathlessly.

Of all the humiliations that come with old age, this might be the most painful for the average Latin American macho man. According to Saba, “For men of a certain age, and from Toribio’s generation even more, this is a way to vindicate their virility and stave off mortality. In his case, he was fooled in the past. He was not even honest, just as those around them were not honest with him. He was not honest with himself. At this point, he chooses this way to hold on to life.”

Good Grief

For an octogenarian male, the next worst thing to failing to get an erection might be to lose a driver’s license. Toribio runs straight into a stand-off with the law that lands him in temporary detention. His son and two daughters come to the police station to get his release. Each one comes with their baggage: Luz (Michele Abascal) is a mousy, frustrated writer engaged in a secret affair with her boss; Silvestre (Rodrigo Sánchez Patiño) drowns his survivor’s guilt in alcohol after getting a second chance at life thanks to a heart transplant; and Sara (Gisela Ponce de León) is an angry blind woman mourning the death of her guide dog.

“I know I wanted to tell the story of a dysfunctional family going through mourning,” says Saba. “I wanted to do a black comedy and find a balance between laugh, joy, deep sadness, and melancholy. Also, how in the smallest things you can find connection and hope.” It’s not just Fluffly, the guide dog, who abandoned the mortal realm. A youthful picture of Toribio’s wife stands on his night table, watching with an incongruent smile his attempts at sexual fulfillment. We eventually learn she was unfaithful to him. So, Toribio is not just after pleasure but self-affirmation.

Like Father, Like Son (And Daughters)

When the characters are not together dealing with Toribio’s escapades - right after they get him off jail, he raids a pharmacy for erectile dysfunction drugs - the siblings go off, each on to their own misadventure, reflecting and refracting the themes of the movie. Like her mother, Luz is in an affair sure to bring grief to all involved. Silvestre looked death straight in the eye, and now he wants to meet the family of the man whose heart pumps his blood. Sara’s anger reminds you of Toribio. When she loses Fluffy’s dead body, her attempts to retrieve it land her in the same jail from which she sprung up Dad.

Saba does a beautiful job of jumping from one story strand to another, illuminating the connections between the characters, how similar they are, and how different they can be. “The structure comes with the tone. To define the tone was very challenging, to bind humor and sadness in a single scene, sometimes in a single shot!” Case in point: a fixed-camera medium shot that shows how garbage collectors take the trash bag containing Fluffy’s remains, unbeknown to the quarreling sisters in the foreground. It’s hilarious. But to get to those flashes of brilliance takes a lot of work. “You do it in the editing room and at the writing stage, juggling cards on a board or paper. You define how to take a funny situation and push it towards sadness. So, it’s not just the structure that matters, but each scene’s too. How long do you hold on to a scene?” wonders Saba.

An Actor’s Showcase

How long do you hold a scene? Well, if it’s a scene with Gisela Ponce de León, you want it to be for the longest time possible. A veteran of Peruvian stage and screen, she plays Sara like a force to be reckoned with. With impeccable comic timing, she takes over every scene she is in. It’s an admirable balancing act, considering the tendency of public opinion to imbue handicapped characters with a saintly disposition that sometimes defies humanity.

"I love Gisela's character," confesses Saba. "It's very important not to stick people with handicaps in a mold. They can be good, bad, generous, miserly. It was important for me to be truthful with the ways the characters could behave. I did not want her lack of vision to define her. Let other characteristics define her."

The character's unarticulated pain enriches her lived-in performance. "Reaching out to the blind community, I discovered there is a mourning period when you lose sight; there can be a lot of frustration with life and the world. The character needed to have a certain anger towards destiny. I spoke with several blind people, and it was very revealing. There are thousands of ways of being under a common condition."

Saba does not play favorites when it comes to his actors. “It was a pleasure to work with all of them. Each one brings something different to the process. We always had a great time with them; I laughed like a madman. Also, when we worked one-on-one in their individual scenes, We had about a week of rehearsal, and after that, we kept talking throughout the shooting. Each actor is very different. Some are more reserved. Others like to chat. For me, that was a great learning experience.”

“For this shooting, I decreed a policy of no cellphones on the set. Rodrigo, who plays Silvestre, thanked me afterward. He said it helped him a lot to keep concentration on the process. Small details improve the shooting, but especially to keep talking about everything.

The four principals get sterling support from Brazilian star Lucelia Santos, who plays a wonderful role as Toribio’s former flame who may or may not offer a new chance at love - or at least, a successful sex encounter. Those conversant in Brazilian soap operas of the ’70s and ‘80s will perk up at the sight of the original “Isaura: The Slave Girl” (1976). It’s hard to find an American equivalent because soap operas occupy a different space in local pop culture. Imagine Susan Lucci coming unexpectedly on an award-worthy movie and knocking it out of the park.

An Unlikely Look at Peru

You can feel the camaraderie on the screen, framed within a particular vision. The fantastic cinematography by Christian Valera gives the urban setting a ghostly, otherworldly quality that mellows out any despair the nearness of death might bring. The night scenes make the city look like a liminal space, a dignified transit place between consciousness and oblivion.

Saba is a Wes Anderson fan; you can feel his influence in the beautifully composed framing. However, the artifice of the studio is supplanted by a lived-in city and public spaces. There is also something of Aki Kaurismaki in the way he mines deadpan humor out of desperate situations. “If there is an influence, it is unconscious. My objective was to tell this particular story and to show Lima under a different lens than the one usually used,” says Saba. And boy, did he deliver.

"When I'm writing a movie, this one and my previous movies, what interests me is to explore the worlds of characters foreign to me. However, in this movie in particular, when I arrived at the editing stage, I realized the movie was much more personal than I thought, and I have to make peace with that. You have to accept that and move forward. That personal dimension comes in different ways. There's the movie's rhythm, feelings you get through the individual stories…We all have dysfunctional families. Most of the time, an art piece transcends the author. Once you finish it, it speaks to you and reveals, "This is what it is about." As an author, you always catch up to what you have created.

Oscars' odds, and Ends

“The Erection of Toribio Bardelli” is the 30th movie Peru submitted as the country’s official candidate for the Oscar. Only one has managed to achieve a nomination. Claudia Llosa’s “The Milk of Sorrow” (2019) competed for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year in 2010 against Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” Scandar Copti and Yarov Shinay’s “Ajami,” and the ultimate winner, Juan José Campanella’s Argentinian hit “The Secret In Their Eyes.”

This could be a game-changer for the filmmaker. Many darlings of film festivals fail to reach American audiences, but the visibility an Oscar nomination brings can do wonders. It won't be easy. This year, two nominations are locked in: Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest" and Anh Hung Tran's "The Taste of Things." Justine Triet's "Anatomy of a Fall" has the Palme d'Or and the visibility from a theatrical run in its favor. That leaves just two spots for 85 movies. Latin America offers worthy contenders. From Argentina, Rodrigo Moreno’s “The Delinquents;” from Colombia, Fabián Hernandez’s “A Male.” Mexican director Lila Avilés made one of the most beautiful movies of the year with "Totem."

The title can be a liability for some audiences and old Academy members alike - they tend to be notoriously conservative. A non-plussed Saba is unapologetic about his choice. "In life, you have to take risks. That's important for me... I'm very happy the movie was chosen to represent Peru in the Oscars. It's a great honor. This will allow many more people to watch it."

Oscar or not, “The Erection of Toribio Bardelli” is a step forward in Latin American comedy and a work that makes Adrián Saba a talent to follow. Movie buff, take notice.