Nora’s Will is about a pesky corpse that makes a lot of trouble – for relatives, friends, loved ones. In this brittle and darkly funny drama, death is a nuisance, but it’s also a means to settle some unfinished business. Director Mariana Chenillo sets a carefully balanced and deliciously ironic mood here; between a reverence for loss, and a cool eye for absurdity. There’s also just a hint of the mystical too; for it’s possible to see the entire movie as a carefully executed plan conducted, as it were, from beyond the grave.
Nora (Silvia Mariscal) in life was a would-be suicide. Living to an old age, she finally manages to overdose on the eve of Passover. This leaves her ex-husband José (Fernando Luján) with a problem. If she’s not buried immediately, under Jewish law, there can be no funeral for five days. Since Nora killed herself – a sin before God – there’s a great issue about how and where she is to be buried (apparently certain Jewish cemeteries would be reluctant to provide a grave in the circumstances).
José, an atheist, wants help to deal with Nora; she has to be cared for. He turns to the local Catholic Church for support, which upsets Nora’s Jewish connections. Complicating matters is the arrival of Ruben (Ari Brickman), José and Nora’s son, and his family. A practicing Jew, Ruben doesn’t have a sense of humour about José’s pranks (he offends the Rabbi by eating ham pizza!).
Meanwhile, José begins to sift through Nora’s belongings and discovers evidence that his former wife had a life and a love he knew nothing about. With his greying beard and sad eyes, Luján’s José looks like an old dog, too weary with age for any more of life’s surprises. A lot of the movie’s dry wit derives from his mischievous desire to play off the Jews against the Catholics. But there’s poignancy here too; José moves from being bewildered and burdened out of duty by Nora’s loss to a fresh, heartfelt curiosity about who she was and what she lived through.
Set almost entirely in Nora’s large apartment, Chenillo shoots the movie in a straightforward manner; it’s so low key and casual it feels a little shapeless. But as more characters appear (and Nora’s plans take hold) the tension builds. It’s an ingenious technique because it lets the more outrageous moments play very real; after all, for most of the movie’s running time Nora is wrapped up in her bedroom, with dry ice. There’s no romanticism in the film about death and Chenillo keeps inventing new ways to make the point, sometimes playfully, as when José’s grandkids play in the coffin intended for Nora.
At home in Mexico Chenillo’s film was a top prize winner. It’s bound to be one of the highlights at the Spanish Film Festival.
