Game preserve

The Young One (1960, Luis Buñuel) is a little different from the Buñuel films that precede it in the sense that it handles social issues in an overt way that builds an increasingly disturbing tension, which results in giving it more of an exploitation feel. And it’s also set in America, specifically the Deep South. 

     The narrative begins in the first act by introducing TRAVER, a black man on the run, and EVIE, “the young one,” he meets along his attempt to escape. She’s an underaged, newly orphaned girl taken in by the game warden MILLER who grooms her to acquiesce to his advances. The second act sees Traver hunted by the racist Miller. The midpoint is the two men having a conversation, in which they learn that they both served in the US army in Italy together during WWII. But they don’t come any closer to resolving their conflict. In act three, around the point we may forget it’s a Buñuel film, the Baptist REVEREND FLEETWOOD pays a call on them and discovers that Evie is being victimized by Miller, along with additionally uncovering Miller’s unlawful plans underway to punish the now revealed to be completely innocent Traver. In the unsettling conclusion, Miller seems to begrudgingly help Traver to freedom as some bargaining tactic to cloak his long-term strategy to let the reverend take Evie, only so he can come back for her and make her his wife. This whole movie feels gross.

     Up until now Buñuel’s greatest strengths have been his subtlety, his use of the language of cinema through subtext, motifs conveying an art that communicates the hidden emotional nuances and moral conflicts embodied by individuals battling with desires, and motives they have trouble identifying. But not this movie. 

     However, there are plenty of attempts by Buñuel wherein he still brings his best efforts at heightening the material through his own cinematic language. I’m just not sure it matters. It’s set on a fictional island like a few other Buñuel films around this time. The island is always a place of despair with Buñuel. And because it’s a game reserve it does tend to feel like a garden of Eden with all its exotic creatures. And maybe I’m reaching, but Evie (Eve?) steps on a tarantula with her heavy boots on that could allude to Eve crushing the serpent under her heel. And yeah Evie and Miller being the only two people on this island. Also, when Traver meets Evie she has an apple, but he is the one who eats it—to show how she lacks any knowledge of the truth of man’s carnal nature? Following soon after, right after she’s taken a shower, there’s this insert of her in a towel adjusting her cleavage that causes Traver to inform her she should be more careful.

     It’s clear from early on that The Young One is no paradise. In this movie, even more disquieting is a scene where Miller dresses Evie up and has her put on a pair of high heels that are way too big for her. His whole thing is thinking if he takes her shopping enough she'll be cool with everything. At the break into act three, we also see a torrential rainstorm around when the reverend shows up, which may indicate some kind of condemnation. And finally, the film is bookended by Traver finding a steel animal trap that foreshadows him walking right into it near the end of the movie. 

     Why have all the Buñuel movies up to this point that depict such lurid, taboo, fetishized areas of man’s questionable morality in relation to his nature been so fun except this one? Is it just me? Like what about that sequence at night where a raccoon in a chicken coop preys on a live chicken, shown in all its gory detail? It starts out cute but turns into something else entirely. Yet as cynical as the movie is, and the way its ending points to the threat of Evie being pursued by Miller, the shot of her right before leaving the island, skipping in her giant high heels gives some hope. Like maybe there is the possibility that there’s enough of her innocence left that she’ll still be able to enjoy what remains of her childhood.