The English-language debut of Argentine director Matías Piñeiro wears its influences proudly. Titled Hermia & Helena, this New York-set film is a playful deconstruction and adaptation of the Shakespeare play that features those two characters, the romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As Camila (María Villar) tells us in the newly released trailer for the movie, she spent a few months in the Big Apple on a fellowship during which she was working on a translation on the Shakespeare text. “Although I didn’t do much translating I managed to do many other things.”
Piñeiro’s film chronicles those other things, which involve several chance encounters, various lovers, and one mysterious meeting with someone from Camila’s past that might have prompted the visit up North in the first place. But that’s best left unspoiled for the thrill of Piñeiro’s film is following its winding and episodic plot wherever it may lead you. In between iPhone-taken shots of the city’s bridges, naturally-lit barren rooms filled with notebooks, and wintry backdrops, Hermia & Helena captures the whimsical loneliness of being a young, fearless artist in New York City.
Check out Camila’s full invitation to catch Hermia & Helena below.
Hermia & Helena opens in New York on Friday, May 26 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Metrograph. Other cities will follow.