Fervor

Johanna Martinez and Timothy Roarke star in this short, sharp two-hander from Guatemalan director Enrique A. Mendoza.

A young Latina woman called Fernada (Martinez) takes a drive seemingly out into the middle of nowhere.  However, we find out that she has an unexpected passenger (Roarke) to whom she relates a painful story of survival and violence, centred around the lives of two brothers in a remote village.

The opening 38 seconds of Fervor could not be more different from what comes next as we follow Fernada’s journeys out into the wilderness to the tune of upbeat rock.  Suddenly, the journey stops, so does the music and so does Fernada.  She steps out of her vehicle, takes a call that we cannot hear and sits alone, contemplating, or even waiting for something or someone.  

We soon find out what.  Or rather who.  A bruised, battered older man is hurled out from the truck.  Fernada appears to be an unlikely kidnapper.  The man makes a lucky break for it, but it’s no good.  Fernada responds violently and her story immediately turns darker.  “Things can get rough in my neighbourhood, but we endure.  That’s until we have no other option but to leave, to escape”.  The stranger’s role starts to become apparent.  He was an oppressor.  The hunter who has become the hunted.

The roles have reversed and so it is Fernada who is now the hunter.  Unflinching, ruthless and tough.  At least from what we see.  When she drives away at the film's ending, after her bitter, hard-hitting monologue, there’s a striking change and we see the real Fernada.  Sensitive, scared and shaken by what’s just happened, at the brutality she has unleashed and unveiled to herself.  She breaks down.  In waves of relief?  In tears of sweet revenge?  Or in revulsion at becoming the hunter herself?

Fervor is a solid accomplishment for both Martinez and Mendoza.  Martinez keeps the viewer entrenched with the film’s only speaking role and her character’s softening in its closing seconds is an impressive transition to the extent that one comes away with a sense that there is a third performance within the film - that of Fernada herself masquerading her new-found menance and wrath before her powerless captive.  For Mendoza, it’s a fine encapsulation of the director’s own mantra to tell stories that "actually stay with people".  Thanks to its simplicy and sincerity, Fervor does.