Fervor: On Being Dazed With Hatred

Enrique A. Mendoza’s 10-minute Fervor dramatises the fury of a woman who has just lost everything to the obstinate malice of a loudmouth. Set in the middle of a desert as dry of hope as they come, the story is a battle of hatreds, deserved and undeserved, an equation of actions and reactions. Tied up, the woman’s victim may now only observe the reactions to his actions, but even now, he cannot help but lean on hostility. Then again, he is tied up, likely to be killed, so perhaps hostility is not all that unnatural. 

And therein lies the key to her catharsis. 

Roger (Timothy Roarke), as he is titled in the credits, a white man on a motorcycle, is forced to suffer the experience of being on the losing side of a power relation. Fernanda (Johanna Martinez) is about to learn, as most in her position tend to, that the catharsis is only partial and the weight of open wounds are not about to be shed off quite so simply. Retribution is a dream, and the futility is the point of Fervor. 

It is why the film emphasises the articulation of the pain Fernanda bears rather than its resolution. It is why a soliloquy is interrupted—a rupture unlike any other in storytelling devices—by the mundane imperative of a phone call. And it is why the win does not taste as sweet as it should. 

On the other hand, enriched by many shots of the landscape’s minutiae as well as the chirpy soundscape, the film actually livens up what is often shorthand for an irrevocably dead pit. This place, harshness and everything, is Fernanda’s territory. Like its larger political context, what makes the land come for you is not so much its inherent brutality, but the intervention of bad faith actors. 

Fervor demonstrates losing battles with the narrative structure and pace of victory, so that you, too, feel as Fernanda feels and will feel—lost, incomplete, left to dry. The chain of reactions, once set into motion is difficult to not get swept up in, even more so stopped. All we are left with are our small wins and starving appetites. 

Watch Fervor Short Film