With Sirāt, you’re waiting for the beat to drop. It’s a film set within the rave scene that’s also constructed like an EDM track, the suspended, thwomp-thwomp tension of Kangding Ray’s score ruling over extended pans of writhing bodies out in the Moroccan desert. But what’s eventually released never feels all that satisfying.
Luis (Sergi López) sheepishly winds his way between the dancers, with his son Estebán (Bruno Nuñez) and terrier Pipa in tow – the only two people (and one dog) seemingly not under the music’s spell. He’s the sort of guy who, ordinarily, would happily keep to himself (it’s certainly a world away from López’s most well-known role, as the violent, fascistic Captain Vidal in Pan’s Labyrinth).
But Luis is here for his daughter, a rave regular who hasn’t made contact in five months. When the military rolls in to declare a state of emergency, ushering EU citizens onto their trucks, Luis chooses to follow south a small group – Stef (Stefania Gadda), Jade (Jade Oukid), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Bigui (Richard Bellamy), and Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson) – en route to a second rave.
He’s told it’s a treacherous journey, especially in that sad little suburban vehicle of his. But what if his daughter’s there? Wouldn’t it be worth the risk? And so, that suspended, thwomp-thwomp tension is transferred instantly to the travellers themselves, and the implicit threat that some terrible misfortune will befall them. “The Sirāt bridge connects paradise and hell,” an opening title card teases, in reference to the Islamic belief in As-Sirāt, a path the dead must take that is “narrower than a strand of hair and sharper than a sword.”
It’s a danger director Óliver Laxe, and his co-writer Santiago Fillol, forcefully telegraph with every narrative and visual turn. It’s there in the fragile allyship Luis builds with his new companions, all played by real-life ravers Laxe met over the years (and they feel like real people, too, including in the rare and welcome choice to cast two actors, Bellamy and Janvier, with limb differences). They’re kind, but slow to trust. Would they leave Luis behind when it comes to it?
Precariousness seems embedded in every rock wall, as their cars hug cliffside roads, reminiscent of the teetering trucks of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) and its predecessor, The Wages of Fear (1953). But, something else is building up: arms and bombs, and voices on the radio speaking of a conflict that will “change the world as we know it”. Our ravers, in turn, simply shrug and respond, “it’s been the end of the world for a long time”, before they drag out their speakers to lose themselves in the thwomp-thwomp again.
How, then, should we feel about any misfortune that lies ahead? Is there a karmic hand to be played here? The world around these travellers is so deliberately hazy (what countries are in conflict? Who knows, all we hear about is “nations”) that it becomes impossible to measure up their myopic reliance on an electronic beat. Is their ignorance a privilege? Or an understandable coping mechanism? And if it’s a mixture of both, how much? All that it means is that when the beat does eventually drop, when the real shock occurs, it doesn’t feel cosmic so much as deliberate manipulation by a filmmaker’s hand. The rhythm feels off.
Dir: Óliver Laxe. Starring: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Richard Bellamy, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid. Cert 15, 114 minutes.
‘Sirāt’ is in cinemas from 27 February
