Thirty years ago, in 1984, Mary Jiménez made another introspective film: Du verbe aimer. She made the film following the death of her mother. It is through her mother that she searched for the portrait of her self. She was thirty-six when the film was released. Today, at the age of sixty-six, Mary Jiménez made Face Deal. She makes the film in the months preceding the death of her father.
Jiménez uses her cell phone to film and to refilm. She scans the image, always coming closer, until it gets blurred. Memories, or the loss thereof, is what this film is all about. You will have to decide for yourself whose face is Mary’s and which is her father Lucho’s or her uncle Arturo’s. That is how Mary Jiménez bridges the distance in space and in time. That is how she makes the most beautiful film on this thing, called dementia. The most sensitive also, even at a distance of less than arm length. (Pieter Van Bogaert)
