DAY NINE  November 11, 2005
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF MY VERY BEST YEARS: A Road Movie to Nowhere
by Aaron M. Fontana
"I wanted it to be nostalgic, but at the same time, I wanted it to be long without saying a lot," says writer/director Martin Boulocq, through an interpreter, about the title of his debut film, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF MY VERY BEST YEARS. It's a mission accomplished, though the film itself--an ostensible, if plaintive, buddy picture--actually does say a lot about the apparently dreary lives of Bolivian twentysomethings.
Made over the course of three years for about $80,000, and not without a few hitches ("You have to basically swallow your pride with a film like this," Boulocq says), the film centers around Berto (Juan Pablo Milan) and Victor (Roberto Guilhon), two pals whose lives reveal to the viewer the stagnant nature of the world in which they live. "I wanted a depiction of what my generation goes through--how they live, what the situation is in the country, the problems that they go through," says Boulocq, who, in the film's press notes, calls his generation the generation of disinterest. "You know, the static monotony of what Bolivia is," he adds.
Again, mission accomplished. The relationship between Berto and Victor centers  around the loose plot of the desperately quiet Berto's numerous and often failed attempts to sell his 1965 Volkswagen--a gift he inherited from his grandfather--so that he may buy a ticket to a hopefully better life in Madrid. When Victor's girlfriend, Camila (Alejandra Lanza), arrives home from abroad, she adds a little much-needed excitement (and drama) to the two friends' lives.
In making his first feature film--which he shot on digital video--Boulocq did not allow his actors to know the script he had in his head, but only their characters' relationships to one another. With this little directorial wrinkle, Berto's car and the three main characters' lust for change in a small, dead-end town, the picture becomes a sort of endearing inversion of your typical road movie--a film with a pointed destination of nowhere.
The film is capped off by a lovely score, care of Rich Ragsdale and Boulocq's brother, Diego. This is a story in and of itself--and one, in fact, fitting of the ragged tale it accentuates. "I had other music in mind," admits Boulocq. "[But] they wanted to charge too much to use it--and my brother actually ended up making up much better music." Proving that, in life, as in THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF MY VERY BEST YEARS, contingency plans often have their own beautiful success.
--For more information, visit www.mostbeautifulfilm.com.
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