Review by Beatrice On 27-Jun-2024
I did not know myself at all, I had no reality of my own, I was in a state of continuous illusion, almost fluid, malleable: others knew me, each in their own way, according to the reality they had given me.
Andes Mountains
A group of disabled people is reaching the top of a mountain where the statue of Christ stands.
A windstorm breaks out, they lose their guide, and while Simon tries to take a selfie, he loses his phone.
On the way back, on the bus, a hearing-impaired girl gives her hearing aid to Simon, who will wear it from that moment on.
These kids are rather wild; they play hide and seek, perform theater, swim, and Simon is invited by his friend to stand guard while he kisses a girl in the women's bathroom.
They are summoned by the management, and it emerges that Simon lacks a certificate proving his disability. His mother is also invited and learns about her son's behavior there.
She tries to understand the reasons, asking him many questions, but he confesses that he has always felt this way.
The boy is not disabled but adopts gestures, facial expressions, and movements as if he were.
His friend advises him on how to obtain the certificate and whom to approach while pretending to be disabled.
This way, they can enter the cinema for free, and Simon also wants to try the psychotropic drugs his adventure companion takes.
He works with his mother's new partner as a mover: their relationship is not good, but this does not explain the boy's radical change.
One day, he takes the van and brings the group of disabled people on a trip, where an accident occurs.
The mother loves him unconditionally, but he is attracted to the condition of disability and alteration, despite seeming very alert and aware.
The new environment he aspires to enter seems to welcome him without prejudice, even though he is the one who is not differently abled.
He feels integrated into an alternative community, perhaps because he does not recognize himself in his life and his "normal" condition.
Simon is probably provoking, searching for his undefined identity, experimenting with another way of being, exploring.
He subjects us to his resistance; he does not want to adapt, embodying a new possibility and raising numerous questions pointing at prejudices.
Why does a boy want to be differently abled? Why does he insist on inhabiting this choice? Why is he attracted to a girl with Down syndrome whom he finds funny and extremely intelligent?
She threatens him, saying, "If you don't make love to me, I'll tell others you're not disabled." This film subverts the standards of ability/disability.
What is diversity? What are the prejudices accompanying our culture regarding this search?
Here, unlike Lars von Trier's The Idiots, who pretend to be disabled to deceive people, the impact is even more pedagogically radical:
Simon does not feel his world is his own, and the extreme final reaction, violent and fueled by his stepfather's idiocy, suggests the torment of those who do not feel understood or accepted, except within the preset boundaries of basic, obtuse schematism, although reassuring and reactionary.
A film that offers a careful look at the dilemma of identity, telling a story of suffering, resistance, and rebellion that could be temporary if accepted with indulgence, but could become the permanent symptom of a face that does not accept a single expression to tell its story, a single possibility to express itself, a single way of being.
From how others behave with us, we should not deduce and learn who we are, but who they are.
27-Jun-2024 by Beatrice