Imagine a friend or close relative whom you know has just gone through a tragedy as personal as a miscarriage. She doesn’t want to talk about it but instead wants your unconditional support and love. You do your best to understand how to provide that, and you don’t push, but you can’t help trying to figure out what she’s thinking and feeling, with scant hints about either. That’s what it’s like watching Cristóbal Serrá Jorquera’s low-key, minimalist Costa Rucan drama El Calor despues de la Lluvia (The Heat after the Rain).
There’s not much for us to go on at any point in the story about what central character Juana (Milena Picado) is going through in her head and heart following the loss of her pregnancy. It’s easy to understand her silence when she retreats from life in San Jose to her parents’ quieter home in a small town following the miscarriage, as well as her breakup with an emotionally clueless boyfriend and joyless participation in an annual religious pilgrimage.
There her mother and father lightly and lovingly inquire about what’s weighing on her (they don’t know about the miscarriage), but she won’t unburden herself to them. That’s fine as far as the drama goes, but for the film’s audience, we can’t get a glimpse of her interior life to engage in a story or understand her character.
Instead, we see Juana symbolically try to wash away something deep in herself through multiple swims beneath a waterfall; see her lay her head in her dad’s lap the way she did while a girl; and push back a bit against the barroom advances of a goofy tangerine farmer. Jorquera makes it all pleasant to look at, but all too cryptic, such as a scene in which Juana intentionally steps on broken glass while wearing her shoes. Why? What’s behind that?
Films are not just about emotion, they are emotion, more than one great filmmaker has said over the last 100-plus years. This film, unfortunately, leaves its emotions buried. Lightly recommended.