QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN

Antonio (Antonio de la Torre) and Estrella (Bárbara Lennie) are inseparable siblings. Their father was a professional diver who fostered their passion for the dangerous trade as they were still children. The film opens with the man throwing a watch in the water and ordering this children to race for it before it reaches the bottom of the sea. Antonio returns with the item, and becomes the most respectable child in the household. He grows up to become inimitable at his profession, earning the titular nickname “Tiger”.

Now adults, Antonio and Estrella work as industrial divers at the docks a in Algericas, in the Southern province of Huelva. They toil in a testosterone-fuelled environment, under the purview or the strict yet occasionally empathetic Fatso. Their work consists mostlynof diving under oil tankers and retrieving people and items from underwater (the decomposing corpses of a man and a child add a touch of grisliness to the proceedings). Their employer and the precise scope of the profession are not entirely comprehensible, at least not to those well-versed in this exotic world. What is clear is that Antonio, Estrella and their peers have to wear heavy suits and carry out smalls errands of various nature in and around the ship hulls.

Estrella has been consistently sidelined because she’s a woman. The problems root back to the watch-fetching ordeal of her childhood. Plus she has devoted the last few years of her life to her ailing father, before he died (we never see the actual man). Such hiatus has consequences for her profession. She is struggling to deliver as usual, and the prospect of finding a new employer is an elusive one (she is frowned upon because of these “idle”years).

Antonio too has problems. His estranged ex wife Cinta does not want him to see their two daughters because he has never ever provided for them. When confronted about the support he has offered, he responds: “life experience, things that don’t have a price”. An unimpressed Cinta takes Antonio to court and cuts all ties between the man and his children, at least until he has been able to meet his financial obligations. So he slips into drug trafficking, removing small amounts of a large cocaine stash stuck underneath one of the big ships. It’s never entirely clear how the drug got there, and how he engages with the criminals.

This is the familiar tale of a good man doing bag things in order to desperately provide for his family. Antonio is warm and avuncular, and perform his illicit task with hesitation. His sister supports him out of kindness, as she has done most of her life. She occasionally has to step into his shoes (or rather, diving suit) after Antonio develops a heart condition that leaves him unable to handle the sea pressure. Their colleagues joke about it: “she should wear it backwards”, presumably in reference to the size of her breasts. A subtle exploitation of sexism without any significant conclusion or takeaway.

The underwater scenes are powerful, with all shades of blue overtaking the screen and strong currents nearly washing the workers away. These people remain attached to the source through an aptly named device: an umbilical chord. These scenes were filmed partly on location in the docks and also partly in the Ciudad de la Luz film studio in Alicante. However the action is a little repetitive, consisting mostly of extracting cocaine from the hidden packages. The prospect of adrenaline-fuelled thrills is limited

Los Tigres is an entertaining watch with a duration of 109 minutes. It succeeds at taking viewers into the worlds of the two very different siblings. Yet it never reaches its full potential. It does not possess the incessant, nail-biting tension of underwater thrillers such as James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989), or Johannes Roberts’s 47 Metres Down (2017). And it does not have the emotional depth of a meaningful family drama. The chemistry between the siblings isn’t particularly effervescent. Their background story is cloudy, and the narrative developments are a little turbid. Full immersion thus becomes a difficult experience for the viewers.

Los Tigres is in the Official Competition of the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival.