Florentino y el diablo

Florentino is a young horseman and singer, a free spirit living in the open world without restrictions, in the Venezuelan plains. He confronts the devil in a duel of improvised verses. As time passes, these unspoilt plains start to change. Through Florentino's voice and actions, the plains cannot be conquered. Its culture defies the devil in the eternal fight between good and evil, between life and death. Labor of love about the Venezuelan "llanos". This film is a low-budget (by necessity) labor of love by Venezuelan director Michael New. It stars his daughter as the female lead, and a couple of known Venezuelan actors, who also worked on the film as a labor of love. It is a slow-moving, poetic film, with typical regional music, and narration in rhyme in the local vernacular. Definitely, an art movie or festival feature, this film still may be a bit too long even for art film lovers. The ambiguous themes of the man fighting eternally against the devil (evil), and man's never ending exploitation of the lands, wildlife and fruits that nature gave us are just too broadly depicted. This combined with the flaws inherent of a production with an extremely low budget mars this film. It has a great concept, but ultimately, it is very tedious. In the plains of Venezuela, since ancestral times, resounds the voice of Florentino, the young singer who defied the Devil to a duel of improvises verses. A fine horseman and a fine singer, Florentino is the mythical representation of the plainsman, a free begin in a world without boundaries or restrictions. However, as times passes the plains are transformed. Porwerfull invaders take possession of lands and cattle and even of men. But the plains culture resists, and this resistance is expressed above all in the music and the voice of Florentino defying the Devil in the eternal fight between good and evil, between life and death.