There’s much to like about Victoria Franco’s Twelve Moons, a serious-minded drama about loss and addiction that avoids easy platitudes and simplistic moralizing. That is, until it suddenly… doesn’t. As the film begins, a series of cryptic, vaguely surreal images set a curious tone: a baby lays on a shore; a man and woman embrace in waist-deep water in the middle of a minimalist fountain; a horse writhes and cavorts in slow-motion. These appear to be the dreams of Sofia (Ana de la Reguera), a 40-something architect who lives in a sleek, modernist home with her developer husband. She has an appointment and is waiting for him to come home to accompany her, but he seems to have forgotten about it. She goes on her own, and we realize that she is seeing an obstetrician for a pregnancy checkup. But something has gone wrong — Sofia has had a miscarriage. She is devastated, naturally, and begins wandering home in a daze. She buys a loosey from a street vendor, grabs a drink, and generally seems dazed. Her husband arrives at one of his construction sites the next morning and finds her passed out on the half-finished roof. He helps her to their car and takes her home to sleep it off.
There are a few things happening here, not the least of which is Sofia’s anger and frustration at another failed pregnancy. One gets the impression that her husband’s absence in her time of emotional need is a fairly constant occurrence, and that Sofia is quite eager to resume smoking, drinking, and indulging other assorted drugs now that her pregnancy is over (she tells her doctor that she had quit everything while trying to conceive, but there is no way to know if this is true). Much of the first half of Twelve Moons, then, tethers audiences to Sofia’s emotionally turbulent perspective; she argues with her husband, arrives late to a meeting with investors and berates them for changing some of her designs, and generally lashes out at those around her. Cinematographer Sergio Armstrong shoots the proceedings in stark digital black-and-white, imbuing the images with a stately, severe quality. Sofia is often framed against huge edifices as she wanders various construction sites, as if she’s wandering through a demolished landscape. Her nocturnal adventures eventually lead to a horrific accident, which prompts an intervention from her father and husband and a stint in rehab.
It must be said, Ana de la Reguera gives a remarkable performance as the troubled Sofia. It’s a difficult, physical role, and director Franco puts her through the ringer. It’s unfortunate that the dramaturgy devolves into anti-drug hysteria and overly obvious religious symbolism. The filmmaker seems to be looking for some kind of rebirth or purification via extreme suffering, but as realized here, it’s so absurd as to strain credulity. It’s as if a humanist drama a la Rachel Getting Married suddenly left-turned into the nightmarish melodrama of Requiem for a Dream — Sofia decides to flee her husband and, seemingly overnight, becomes a homeless drug addict who has visions of nursing a baby and collects doll parts while living in squalor with a community of dope fiends. It’s all very symbolic, and in this we locate the film’s ultimate, essential failure: Franco makes the baffling decision to move her material from the specificity of a character study to the vagueness of the metaphoric and symbolic. The religiosity rings false, and the severity of Sofia’s cosmic punishment comes across more like warmed-over Haneke or von Trier than an autonomous artistic voice. Let’s hope Franco’s next endeavor aims a little higher than mere arthouse miserabilism.
Published as part of Tribeca Film Festival ’25 — Dispatch 1.
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