La casa lobo

German voices waft through an empty room in a dilapidated-looking house – what house, exactly, for it is constantly changing? We’re in a Chilean film and thus would assume that this creepy mutating building must be there as well. German voices in a Chilean surrounding: Nothing nice is evoked by this combination – runaway Nazis come easily to mind, leading straight on to the Colonia Dignidad, a sect-like colony of German expats those upper echelon had few compunctions about torturing and killing those judged renegades ... LA CASA LOBO is a most perplexing creation: An abstract while narrative animated film, an exquisite piece of hand-crafted cinema that talks as much through words as it does through textures and movements. The human presence is reduced to voices. What we see is an organic universe (not a cosmos!) whose shapes seem to evolve, become and collapse in a single constant flow that defies all laws of physics, gravity in particular – tables and chairs move up walls, plants grow from the most unexpected directions ... Few and far apart are the cinematic experiences that deserve to be called tactile, like LA CASA LOBO that touches the eyes and ears, plays with our nerves, grabs at our guts. (Olaf Möller)