ALL THE WAYS OF GOD, screening as part of the Cambridge Film Festival’s Catalan Cinema strand, is a modern-dress morality play which takes as its starting point the biblical character of Judas and the lacuna in the gospels between his betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent suicide.

The “Judas” of this story (played by Marc Garcia Coté) is a desperate, lost soul, racked with guilt but unable to give up on life entirely. First seen trudging along a desolate shore, he heads inland and enters a deserted forest. The close-up, handheld camerawork and use of the boxy Academy ratio accentuate the claustrophobic mood of a man with nowhere to hide from himself.

Almost immediately, his quest for isolation is disturbed by another man (Oriol Pla) following him through the woods. This early, near-wordless stretch of the film is half chase sequence, half odd-couple comedy as the two travellers fight each other, split up, join together again and ultimately come to a sort of uneasy understanding. There are echoes of Gus van Sant’s GERRY, a story of two socially maladjusted men lost in the wilderness, in the blending of comedy and unease. And the pair find the equilibrium of children play-fighting to test each other’s boundaries as they gradually reach a rapport.

… grace, redemption, or just the oblivion of death?

The extended scene where both characters, now reconciled to each other’s company, swim together in a deep lake, is clearly meant as the centrepiece of the film. Shot in slow motion, with a swelling orchestral score underneath, in contrast to the diegetically-scored majority of the film, it gives an emotional weight to the blossoming connection between the two characters. Its obvious baptism subtext calls back to the biblical nature of the story. There are archetypal images present through the film, from the bag containing thirty pieces of silver our Judas carries with him, to the rope he rests his head on in a later scene.

Judas’ companion is an ambiguous figure; alternately friend, antagonist, guide and confidant. A late-night chat lit by flickering campfire light is the closest the two come to opening up about their respective pasts, and getting to the heart of the matter over whether Judas can find forgiveness, or deserves it.

ALL THE WAYS OF GOD screens on 8 September at 20.00 at APH

httpvh://youtu.be/dtnUorKpmjo