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César Aira: Festival (Festival)
The wittily named Alec Steryx (though he is Belgian, unlike Asterix who is French. However he was a comic writer in his early life) is a distinguished film director who has made many well-received films. He is to preside over the Grand Jury, and present a retrospective of his extensive body of work. Where the festival is taking place is not mentioned. Clues point to various places, all conflicting, but we may assume that it is a variation of Buenos Aires. We know that Aira did attend a film festival and that was no doubt the inspiration for this work.
Steryx films are not seen as commercial films for the hoi polloi but quality films for the cognoscenti, even though they seem to be primarily science fiction films. We actually get the plot of one the plot turns on the kidnapping of Princess Nivea’s spoiled pooch by archvillain Turcomax’s gang, and the dog is barking his head off on an asteroid made of cardboard and will be rescued by a masked hero riding an atomic goose. Yes we seem to be in Ed Wood territory here. Aira, as is his wont, is clearly mocking film snobbery and film critics.
The organisers have paid for two plane tickets for him. However, to their great surprise he turns up with his ninety-year old very cantankerous mother. :The appearance of the old woman, like a skilful move in a chess match, had thoroughly discombobulated them. Disruption is, of course, one of Aira’s themes.
Why has he brought her? He was not known to be attached to his mother or of being a mother’s boy. Indeed he had been married at least twice and has had children with one or more women. During those marriages he seems to have more or less neglected her. There are various theories and he himself suggests why at the end. It would also seem that the mother has an ulterior motive for coming beyond that of seeing how her son’s career has worked out.
She is old and infirm and always complaining to and about him and others. Indeed, more than once he seems to lose patience with her. She accompanies him everywhere and that means every film, every event, every meal. Though she is clearly exhausted, she does not give up. To make matters worse, she is very slow so they are late, often very late, for everything. Moreover she is never happy and will frequently complain loudly during a film to the annoyance of the rest of the audience.
Aira continues his mockery of film snobbery: it would have been dubious to claim that there was something “for all tastes” because more or less the same nonconventional tastes prevailed and, tongue-in-cheek, he wonders why the educated masses prefer the conventional but second rate commercial films.
The festival has been organised by Perla Sobietsky (a good Argentinian name) who has seen all of his films (most people have seen few, if any) and written a book on the man and his films, which she hopes to present to him but struggles to do so. (We get occasional samples of her theories). She has decided that he is a genius who appears on the scene when least expected and and introduces genuinely new artistic elements, touches the audience’s eternal chord, and so reinvents, once and for all, the art of cinema. It is not clear if many others share her views. (Who were those ludicrous films kidding, they said? They looked like they were made by a madman.
).
Lots of things go wrong for Perla and Aira seems to enjoy mocking her. The old lady is the main source of her problems, both in delaying and disrupting many events but also preventing Perla getting close to her hero. Steryx had allowed his films to be used by Playstation and the game has many enthusiastic fans who do not share Perla’s views on the artistic merits of his films. Nor, it would seem, does the local press.
She is partially rescued by Olivia, a stage actress turned film actress who volunteers to help out and look after the mother but it all adds to the comedy, not least as they do not have a language in common. Olivia also has her doubts about Steryx: You’re the expert. Everything I hear about him is ambiguous.
This is certainly a very witty book even if much of the fun is based on the discomfiture of various people, Perla, Steryx and, indeed, the old lady. Mother is a wonderful creation: miserable, complaining, cantankerous, barely able to move unaided, yet hanging in, never giving up, determined to be as fully involved as her son and acting as a major disruptor. We, like the festival audience, might wonder why Steryx brought Mum along but there is no doubt that she makes this a another enjoyable Aira novel.
Publishing history
First published in 2011 by Mansalva
First published in English in 2024 by New Directions
Translated by Katherine Silver