Uruguay's worst nightmare comes to the cinema: what happens if mate is banned?

Alejandro Prieto Montevideo, 22 Mar Neither bombing nor robots taking to the streets, Uruguay of a dystopian future has only one nightmare: that mate is banned; an apocalypse with which a film as comical as it is absurd bets to touch the most sensitive “fiber” in a country “addicted” to typical drinks. “A Uruguay without mate, two almost heroes, a great feat” is the legend that presents “Mateína”, a film where, far from suffering wars or an invasion of kangaroos like the one imagined in a viral Twitter post in 2019, the South American country faces a harsh ban on the consumption and sale of yerba mate. FORBIDDEN TO DRINK MATE As one of its directors, Pablo Abdala, says in an interview with Agencia Efe, the film plays, hand in hand with imagining a future without the infusion of hot water and grass poured into a pumpkin container that Uruguayans take all the time, a very particular “fiber”. “We really liked playing with that idea of what people would do (without being able to drink mate). 'Mateína' is set outside Montevideo, it's all inside, so we thought the situation that village veterans were going to beat (consume) weed as if it were a joint stick (marijuana),” he says. While a “liberating crusade” led by two “small-time” villagers who become mateine traffickers becomes the only hope in recovering the identity piece that mate represents for the country where, as the BBC slogan, 8 kilos of grass are consumed per person per year, the story has, for Abdala, a deeper background. According to the filmmaker, who worked for more than a decade on the project of the film devised by his co-director Joaquín Peñagaricano some 16 years ago, the film calls into question “how ridiculous prohibitions are”. “Many times they tell you 'I forbid this for your sake, because I am the State and my obligation is to protect you', but in reality we all know that prohibitions are also motivated by reasons that are not exactly people's health, they have other ulterior motives,” he says. AN EMOTIONAL ENJOYMENT After a editing process that was longer and more complex than expected because it was difficult to rule out “even whole scenes”, the “road movie” that has the duo of “Moncho” and “Fico” as protagonists arrived in Uruguayan theatres this March for a meeting with the audience that Abdala describes as a “miracle”. For the director, this is because, in times when cinema is seen more and more alone from some platform, the experience of cinemas is as strange as it is valuable. Along these lines, and after attending several performances in various parts of Uruguay, the director says that people are already “taking over the film” and recounts that, for example, a spectator tears when he felt that history reminded him of a situation experienced during the last Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985). “We are talking about an absurd comedy that clearly has a lot of parallels that we are looking for, that could work or not and, luckily, at least for a group of people they are working,” he says. In addition, he says that the impact was greater with some people from the department (province) of Florida (central), where much of the film was filmed, since there those who participated as extras were seen on the big screen where, for some, it was the first time watching a film. “For a person from a small town such as La Cruz to go to the movies, see the film, like it, feel identified and tell you that she is excited is like 'it's already'”, highlights the case of Irma, a septuagenarian who had never been to the movies and was seen in “Mateína”. FROM URUGUAY TO THE WORLD On the other hand, Abdala says that a concern of both directors was whether the film, which is a co-production with Argentina and Brazil and starred by Diego Licio, Federico Silveira, Chiara Hourcade and César Troncoso, among others, would reach foreign viewers. Although he says that there are those who don't know what mate is, the filmmaker stresses that anyone “makes an almost instantaneous association with elements of their culture” and, whether by imagining it with tea, beer, sangria or caipirinha, approaches the plot of the film. It's just that, Abdala says, Moncho himself sums up for anyone a few minutes after the start of the film what mate is for Uruguay: “You make the most beautiful things in life to take some mates later, that's how it is. I tell you more, one actually takes (fucks) to have some matecitos later”, says the picturesque “almost hero”. CHIEF apf/cmm/rrt (photo) (video)