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Juan Fernandez finds you can go home again in Liverpool.

Liverpool
Directed by Lisandro Alonso. Starring Juan Fernández, Nieves Cabrera, and Giselle Irrazabal.
Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel).
Fri, Sun-Mon, Feb 5, 7-8
***

The fourth film from Lisandro Alonso taps into that most primal feature of human storytelling: the desire to return home. But unlike, say, The Odyssey, which hinges itself upon Odysseus’s longing to see his wife and son again, the hero of Liverpool doesn’t seem all that concerned with what he might find at home when he gets there. For the enigmatic Farrel, who’s served most of his adult life as a sailor, returning to his family’s little village in southern Argentina seems at best like an idle curiosity, and at worst an obligation.

And yet Alonso keeps his characters permanently at arm’s length, preferring panoramic shots of the scenery they wander through to anything resembling an interrogative close-up. So any claims as to Farrel’s psychology are therefore strictly guesswork on my part; I have to assume that he’s as muted and opaque as the man behind the camera. With his ragged sweaters, empty-eyed stare, and utter lack of urgency in anything he does, he certainly acts the part.

One thing I will say for Liverpool: it’s consistent. The uncompromisingly glacial pace begins at frame one, with unhurried-to-the-point-of-comatose shots of sea life on Farrel’s boat. Even once his plan has been announced to his supervisor, and the mainland lights appear in the distance, things move at what could charitably be called a crawl. Farrel gets something to eat, watches some strippers, and stashes some duffel bags in an alley — in each case the cuts are quick, the intervening scenes long and unflinching.

There is something to be said for Alonso’s approach, which is assured in its own way, and which hits some nice notes in these early scenes. But it’s a game of diminishing returns. By the time Farrel silently hitchhikes his way home and wanders into the local restaurant, his face as blank as ever, you realize there’s no big reveal coming. (Larger plot devices, like a mentally-challenged younger sister he’s never met, loom on the horizon but aren’t pursued.) More than that, a fundamental question becomes more and more pressing: why, exactly, did he come back? When his elderly father eventually asks him this, Farrel, of course, has no answer.

It’s possible that my inability to get on Alsonso’s wavelength is not entirely the film’s fault. Maybe I was too antsy. Maybe I was in a particularly distractible state of mind, perched on the foot of my bed with the overhead lights on. This happens.

But there’s a bigger problem here, and one that can’t be explained away by an audience’s fickle moods. Once you get right down to it, there’s nothing really at risk in the film. It’s a world of static — moody, slowly imploding static, sure, but static nonetheless. Rather than challenge or upset the village’s sleepy dynamic in any way, Farrel blends right in. It’s like he never left.

In fact, the only thing out of place in the entire movie is the metal keychain Farrel presents to his sister, which spells out “Liverpool” in big metal letters. Now here’s an object whose very presence feels disruptive. Where did it come from? What could it mean?

By the time the girl looks up, maybe to ask these very questions, Farrel has walked away, up a hill and into the woods, and is gone.