Karen Cries On The Bus / Karen Llora En Un Bus
20 October, 2011Karen Cries On The Bus starts off as a story about independence, and remains defiantly so throughout.
The film begins with Karen on a bus, crying – there’s something quite maddening when a film’s title is so literal. She has left her husband and is hoping to start a new life in Bogotá. However, after a ten year marriage to the only man she’s ever slept with, things are not as easy as she would have hoped. She attains a surprise ally in the promiscuous Patricia but it’s not until she finds someone who allows her to break out of herself that she truly begins to start the new life she had hoped for.
Directed by Gabriel Rojas Vera, Karen Cries On The Bus is a reworking of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It’s main strength and failing is it’s focus on Karen, the only character in the story who we are really given a chance to understand. Her search for independence never dims, even when it seems as if she’s making the wrong choice. This stubbornness and lack of easy choices propels the story, yet also makes it hard to appreciate the lead character. Even when she’s presented in difficult circumstances it’s hard to feel any warmth to Karen as she shows so little warmth herself during the film.
Karen Cries On The Bus was showing as part of the BFI London Film Festival
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzmD2zd3Ewc
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