PROSAIC VERSES

IMON Mesa Soto's Un Poeta (A Poet) is an intense character study of Oscar Restrepo, a poet who believes he never got his due in life.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

He is despondent and in decline, craving the elusive public recognition that he thinks he deserves and intent on not settling for anything less. Age is not in his favour and the marriage too has collapsed under strain. On paper, Oscar might feel like a typical portrayal of a bitter, failed, frustrated artiste—alcoholic, misanthropic, egotist, responsible for his own fate as much as being guided by the vagaries of destiny itself and living in the past than working towards the future—but it's the way the character has been written and performed and the progression of the plot itself that makes him deeply humane despite his flaws, so much so that you can't help not sympathising with him.

Colombian director Soto won the Palme d'Or in 2014 for his short film Leidi. His debut feature, Amparo, featured in the Critics' Week in 2021. This Colombia-Germany-Sweden co-production is his second feature that fetched him the jury prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival.