Writer and Director: Martín Rejtman
An entertaining scenario set among the yoga studios of Santiago, Martín Rejtman’s 90-minute breakup comedy is a dry, tongue-in-cheek story of a depressive yoga teacher who repeatedly meets his students across several months in increasingly strange scenarios. An episodic film that never takes itself too seriously, Rejtman includes plenty of coincidences, absurdist interactions and reflections on physical and spiritual health as protagonist Gustavo tries to put his life back together without changing a thing.
Yoga teachers Gustavo and Vanessa decide to end their marriage after a failed bout of couples counselling and set up rival studios. Suddenly on quite different paths, both separately attend a yoga retreat to try to reconnect, pursue other relationships and try to teach their students, but it is Gustavo who struggles the most when a knee injury and a persistent mother from Argentina distracts him from his purpose.
The Practice has a purposeful innocent humour that underpins many of the silly scenarios that Rejtman creates as his protagonist blunders between home, hospital appointments and family interventions. The creation of character is nicely achieved with Gustavo having just enough credibility to sustain the inept and slightly depressive scenario while Esteban Bigliardi’s dry and restrained performance gives him an everyman quality.
There is plenty of fun to be had in the strange encounters that Rejtman creates as Gustavo meets an attractive pharmacist Laura (Camila Hirane) with an anesthetist boyfriend Alberto (Víctor Montero), suspected locker room thief Mathias and overly friendly student Steffi whose memory loss becomes a recurring theme. The Practice manages to cross these various characters in unusual and amusing ways creating unlikely but silly scenarios to bring them together and reflect on Gustavo’s consternation.
Vanessa (Manuela Oyarzún), however, gets fairly short shrift in the film and The Practice largely forgets about her, offering up the odd mirror scene later in the film when she runs a few classes, finds a new temporary boyfriend and attends the same retreat at a different time, but there is little sense of Vanessa as a real person or that her story matters to Rejtman as much as Gustavo’s. Oyarzún offers some sense of Vanessa’s weariness with men and life but doesn’t get the opportunity to delve more fully into the ending of her marriage or the care she still expresses for her former husband.
The Practice has some nice moments and sustains its eccentric tone well throughout its running time but could do more to explore the potentially competitive engagement between former husband and wife hinted in the synopsis. It could also better connect the ongoing concern with Gustavo’s physical health with the yoga practice that he starts to withdraw from but there is much to enjoy in this unique yoga comedy.
The Practice is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2023.
