Julián Hernández | Atmósfera (Atmosphere) / 2010

coming out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Emiliano Arenales Osorio, Ulises Pérez Mancilla, and Sergio Loo (screenplay), Julián Hernández (director) Atmósfera (Atmosphere) / 2010 [20 minutes]

 

So prescient is Julián Hernández’s short film Atmósfera that if you were given no date, you might imagine that he premiered this work in 2022, as most of us gradually came together after long separations due to the pandemic COVID-19 and its variants. But this 2010 film features three individuals who are isolated and terrified because of undetermined previous epidemic that plagues a Mexican coastal city, where public speakers announce (with the voice of Patricia Madrid) every few minutes to “Be calm. Do not touch objects or other people,” as well as suggesting that individuals who have come down with the disease thus far evidently have gone on “shopping sprees” after being exposed to the sun or water.

     Although the epidemic’s symptoms are evidently still in question, the announcements caution the population to stay indoors, to remain in the dark, and to drink only bottled water, which one of the first figures we observe Cecila (Damayanti Quintanar) does in great quantities. She is a photographer who has evidently sneaked out, as later it appears she regularly does, to snap photos, often leaving them where she has taken them (her camera is the automatic self-developing kind) before rushing back to her room and closing off the blinds.

      She is the first one to observed, after one of her raids on the sunlit terrace of her apartment complex, that touching her body brings about great pleasure, not terrible suffering, and that doing so her clothing begins to take on color in a world that Julián Hernández otherwise presents as being in black-and-white. Her dress grows purple, and as she puts on lipstick, her otherwise gray lips turn red, the color of which remains on the black-and-white glass window to which she presses them.

       Two other men in the complex, Alberto and Felipe (Harold Torres and Guillermo Villegas) also begin slightly to break the rules, one skateboarding the terraces of his complex as he darts in and out of the sun, and the other taking a nice hot bath in his tub, both feeling, it appears, rejuvenated from the experience. The skateboarder Felipe (Guillermo Villegas) finally faces the sun, enjoying the feeling it has upon his face and the bather Alberto (Harold Torres), hearing the movements of both the skateboarder and the stealthy photographer, checks out the terrace, discovering some of the photographers’ planted pictures.      

     Increasingly over a few moments in time, as the public announcement system continues blasting its dire restrictions, they all escape from seclusion and move, as Cecilia already has, to the beach, joining her near the place where she sits.

      The dark blue water and the golden sand are so irresistible that finally Felipe strips naked and walks in the water, waving the others to follow. Cecilia does the same, and finally Alberto, all of them discovering the joy of just standing together in the plashing waves. As Cecilia sets her camera to make a self-photo the three gather in the incoming waves to have their picture taken, which soon after they paste along with others to Felipe’s surfboard before returning to the waters as they move out further for a swim, suddenly disappearing from view as the film ends.

       The epidemic, it appears, perhaps spread by local tourists, is simply one of enjoyment, of a sense of freedom and communion with each other, which these three disobedient youths have suddenly discovered. Just being with others is a lure that this trio could not ignore despite the societal warnings.

      Atmosphere is certainly not one of Hernández’s best films, but is utterly fascinating, particularly given its new pertinence in our post-epidemic days. This short science-fiction tale may reveal an entirely new meaning for “coming out” movies.

 

Los Angeles, August 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).