It Would Be Night in Caracas

When society begins breaking down, the chaos unleashed often affects all aspects of everyday life, including everything from the availability of food and medicine to the collapse of basic law and order to the disappearance of common decency and civility. Under conditions like this, it truly feels like the world is falling apart, transforming into a quintessential hell on earth. So it was in Venezuela in 2017, when the government of President Nicolás Maduro began clashing with opposition groups in a series of violent protests across the country, especially in the streets of its capital and largest city, Caracas. The general public quickly got caught in the crossfire of this madness, the kind of fate that befalls 28-year-old writer-editor Adelaida (Natalia Reyes), for whom every day becomes a struggle to survive. Having just lost her mother to cancer and her apartment in a brazen takeover by a radical militia group, Adelaida’s essentially left homeless. And, when she inadvertently becomes caught in the middle of a nighttime street fight between rival factions, she’s brusquely whisked away (ironically to safety) by a seemingly masked thug, Santiago (Moisés Angola), the militant (and believed-missing) brother of one of her friends. Together they take refuge in the apartment of Adelaida’s neighbor, Aurora (Blanca Vanessa Núñez), who recently succumbed to the effects of a chronic health condition. However, as tragic as Aurora’s death might have been, it may also turn out to be Adelaida’s salvation: As a Spanish national living in Caracas, Aurora had been planning to return home to escape the escalating violence in Venezuela, with a plane ticket and travel papers already in hand – items that Adelaida now seeks to use to facilitate her own exit by assuming her deceased friend’s identity. It’s an ambitious undertaking filled with challenges despite having the apparent means to make it happen. Adelaida’s story is thus reminiscent of the experience of Australian journalist Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) in “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982), a depiction of the reporter’s frantic attempt to flee Indonesia during a violent 1965 coup attempt under conditions similar to what’s depicted here. Unfortunately, while ‘It Would Be Night in Caracas” might sound like a nailbiter comparable to the aforementioned title, it struggles to stay on point in maintaining viewer interest. To a great degree, the film provides little in the way of context for explaining how these circumstances arose, apparently assuming that audiences are as intimately familiar with their back story as most Venezuelans likely are. This offering also tends to meander significantly in the opening act, briefly exploring (but never fully developing) an array of story threads (such as a blossoming romance between Santiago and Adelaida) before finally settling on the protagonist’s impersonation escape plan as the principal thrust of the picture’s core narrative. That, regrettably, can make for a very frustrating and unsatisfying watch. Even though the film somewhat redeems itself in the second half, there’s a good chance filmmakers Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás may have lost their audience by that point. And that’s unfortunate: given how much Venezuela has been in the news of late, I’m sure that there are many would-be viewers out there who would like to know more about this country and how it has come to dominate current headlines. But, considering how this release plays, it’s unlikely that the curious will be able to get much along those lines from this unfocused effort.