THE NUDE

The film La Demora [The Stay] opens with a tight close-up of an old man's partial profile. Fittingly for an old man in the early stages of dementia, the frame of the close-up cuts off the top of his head. Stopping the frame makes it apparent that the image could be called “The hanging,” hanging for the position of his slightly drooped head and neck; hanging for the flabby flesh of his cheek and neck, including the flesh of his double chin that forms two small breasts with his chin; and hanging simply for the suggestion of aging flesh and impending death. The tip of the man's nose also appears suspended from the top of the frame, contributing to the sense of fragmentation in the image. In the stilled image, rivulets of water drip down from his face. Director Rodrigo Plá also practices delayed cinema and holds the camera on the old man in this position for at least twenty seconds. The gray-haired chest of the old man trembles slightly in reaction to the water pouring over his head. The water running from an off-screen faucet can be heard but not seen. The visual absence of the water source adds sensory disruption to the uncertainty of the scene.

Plá's camera cuts for several seconds to a shot of the man's left hand resting on his left knee, indicating that he sits in the process of showering. The tight shot focuses on his knees, hand, and lower thighs. Water drips onto and bounces off his knee as though dropping onto an inanimate object. As in the opening take, the scene indicates bodily fragmentation and disjunction. Body parts stand in for and represent the whole man and his being. After several seconds of this long take, the camera cuts again to a close-up of his gray, wet, chest hair. In this opening take the man's identity, situation, and story remain unknown. The scene conveys dependence, vulnerability, uncertainty.

Another cut to a shot from behind the man shows someone's hand at work washing and scrubbing his hair. The camera stays on the back of his head as the hand rather roughly but thoroughly washes around and in his right ear. Then he tilts to the right for the washing of his left ear.