INSTANTE - Rock and Ice Review

INSTANTE
★ ★ ★ ½

The strange and imaginative Instante juxtaposes one man’s stressful urban reality with the itinerant climbing lifestyle of another. Using a series of weird dream sequences, director Diego Delmar progressively enmeshes the two stories.

An early scene abounds with vibrant trance music and unusual cinematography that speeds up, slows down and warps images. It portrays a man clad in black joyfully dancing, running and ascending rocks in a gorgeous limestone boulder field (Castle Hill, in New Zealand) as if he’s discovering climbing for the first time. This character could represent either of the men, or both, and their mutual discovery is the meaning of play through climbing.

A fictive, artistic film, Instante isn’t climbing porn on the other hand offers a fresh perspective on the lifestyle. The film celebrates the flow of movement and the rhythm of the natural world. Delmar aptly describes it as “experience cinema”; as I watched, my body certainly twitched to climb.

—Lizzy Scully , Rock and Ice Magazine.