Grenouilles (1983)

 

After making three feature films, Adolfo Arrieta returned to making shorts with this strange, "thriller", Grenouilles (Frogs in French). The plot involves a group of frogmen protecting miniature glow-in-the-dark frogs that fell from outer space from a bomb-launching gorilla (or, rather, a man in a gorilla suit). There are also rival frogmen seeking to steal the frogs to sell to a baroness. Yet, Arrieta takes what is essentially an absurd plot, and it turns it into something eeriely beautiful through his highly theatrical and artificial direction. Like all of his films, Grenouilles was shot on 16mm, and the sets are rudimentary at best. Yet it infuses the film with a sense of wonder and foreboding. The movements of the actors are like a choreographed ritual. It is as if the world of Grenouilles takes place at just a slightly askew angle from reality. Like in his other films, the frogs take on the role of a fetishistic talisman, similar to the fireman's helmet in Flammes, or the statue in Sylvia Couski. Despite being only twenty minutes, Grenouilles is hypnotic and satisfying, though one cannot help but wish for more.