Totem (2023)

Direction: Lila Aviléz
Country: Mexico 

Tótem is the sophomore feature by Mexican writer-director Lila Aviléz, whose debut feature happened in 2018 with The Chambermaid. It’s an unsentimental and deeply personal family drama seen through the eyes of Sol (Naíma Sentíes), a 7-year-old girl who is psychologically preparing to bid farewell to her father, Tonatiuh (Mateo García Elizondo), who is battling cancer. The story revolves around the emotions surrounding Tonatiuh's 27th birthday party, a significant event during this challenging period of their lives. Despite the seemingly grim backdrop, there are many touching details to be discovered within this narrative, thanks to well-developed characters, pitch-perfect performances, and a tactful direction.

The birthday celebration occurs at the house of Sol’s undemonstrative grandfather, organized by her aunts Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), who hires a mystic woman to cleanse the house from negative energies, and Nuria (Montserrat Marañón), a single mother grappling with alcohol issues. Despite aggravating financial problems, the family decides to keep Cruz (Teresita Sánchez), Tonatiuh’s tireless caretaker. 

Tótem provides a grounded, well-rounded insight into the value of life before it changes irrevocably. It belongs to the category of small choral films that, having something to say, are all the more engaging because they're rooted in truth. However, despite its keen observations and insight, it might not leave you completely floored.

Compact and modest in its storytelling, this film can be both heartwarming and heart-wrenching in equal measure. It feels good to see the tensions and conflicts within the family being engulfed by tenderness and love. The film's restraint, brought up by a refined cinematic language, often communicates more through silence than words. Yet, its tenuousness and temperance might limit its reach to a broader audience.

Huesera: the Bone Woman (2023)

Direction: Michelle Garza Cervera
Country: Mexico / Peru

This Mexican chiller written and directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, signing here her first feature film, has its way in terms of mood, visuals and storytelling. On top of that, it comes with an insightful message about motherhood, a recurrent subject in horror movies, but one that's rarely treated with such peculiarity and gravitas.

Bolstered by a nervy plot that was executed with efficiency, Huesera: the Bone Woman tells the horrific story of a fearful young woman, Valeria (Natalia Solián), who, after receiving confirmation of her first pregnancy, becomes haunted by a sinister figure and occult forces that interfere with her body and behavior. Self-doubt, emotional confusion and furious delirium impel her to participate in a dismaying ritual led by a trio of witches. It can be her salvation or her ruin. 

This anxiety-inducing exercise in horror, engrained with creepy reality/dream dualities and heavy dark music, also works as a metaphor for unwanted lives camouflaged by false happiness and marked by family and societal impositions. 

Cervera is adroit at manipulating dark settings, dragging us into Valeria’s disturbed psyche and making us hostages there. Huesera, a downright effort composed with trenchant expressions and a spellbinding atmosphere, prefers subtle suggestions to overt statements.

Robe of Gems (2023)

Direction: Natalia López
Country: Mexico

This visually intriguing, harshly told, and drastically sad tale directed by Bolivian-born Natalia López (the wife of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and editor of two of his most known films - Silent Light and Post Tenebras Lux) is infected with dark tones, baffling connections, and a tragic cruelty that makes hard for viewers to follow it in the first place. 

Robe of Gems tells us about three women - the wealthy and emotionally unstable Isabel (Nailea Norvind), her housekeeper Maria (Antonia Olivares), and a defeated police chief, Roberta (Aida Roa) - whose paths connect and unfold within a rural Mexican community that is passive in the face of crime, violence, and systemic corruption. They are condemn to eternal misery in a somber film that causes anguish at all times, a fact reinforced by its laconic narrative form and glacially slow sequences. 

With tension underlying each scene, this is a restless cinematic experience that ends brutally shocking, leaving us with a bitter taste in our mouths. There’s no innocence in this picture, where the the images - multiple medium close-up shots are used - can make an impact but the dialogues are often uninteresting. Obscurity and pain are part of the scheme in a film incapable of offering a small  glimpse of happiness whatsoever. Yet, there is some point and truth in what it tries to say, and that will probably reflect in the way you think about the film after the credits roll. A hard one to watch; some mixed feelings.

La Civil (2023)

Direction: Teodora Mihai
Country: Mexico / Romania / other

Co-written and directed by Romanian director Teodora Mihai (Waiting for August, 2014), La Civil is a solid, relentlessly thrilling drama with an ultra-realistic plot based on a real-world story, strong performances, and a resolute direction. On the one side, this is a chilling observation of violent Mexico and the rough ways of its cartels; on the other, it's a depiction of a mother fighting to find her kidnapped daughter while scraping through the abysses of places whose boundaries have been moved. 

The actress Arcelia Ramírez impersonates this mother, whose fragility veers to fearlessness as she seals an uncommon agreement with a military unit recently transferred to the small town where she lives. We never let go of the heroine she plays and want to applaud her unremitting investigation to know the truth. Yet, the fear is real and the sense of hopelessness is excruciating. The same cannot be said of her passive husband, Gustavo (Álvaro Guerrero), who had left home to live with a much younger woman. 

Mihai grabs hold of her character and the spectators by dragging them into a vertiginous nightmare. Her narrative mechanics never weigh down the power of the story, which works as a social chronicle of a country ravaged by violence and corruption.

Dos Estaciones (2022)

Direction: Juan Pablo Gonzalez
Country: Mexico 

Juan Pablo Gonzalez's feature length debut, Dos Estaciones, is set in Atotonilco El Alto, Jalisco, where the California-based writer-director was born and raised. Inspired by members of his own family in direct relation with the tequila business, Gonzalez presents a realistic rural drama and contemporary portrait of the region with a strong female character at the center. 

The modern machinery and the traditional Mexican village almost strive to coexist together, in a story about an adamant tequila rancher, Maria Garcia (Teresa Sánchez), who having inherited the factory Dos Estaciones from previous generations, managed to modernize it and thrive economically. But all of a sudden, her lifetime work collapses in front of her eyes. It’s not just the fierce competition and the pesticide-resistant plague that threatens the agave fields; it’s also the unannounced weather-related challenges that sometimes require expensive remedial measures. 

Adopting a man-like posture and exhibiting a nearly military look, Sanchez is impeccable as this once successful entrepreneur who gained the respect of the villagers. In the last attempt to save her factory, Maria hires Rafaela (Rafaela Fuentes), an experienced and versatile worker to whom she becomes physically attracted. The focus then briefly shifts to Tatis (Tatín Vera), a local transgender hairdresser whose salon is about to be expanded. 

Dos Estaciones is not flashy nor imposing, but its purpose and meaning rings loud, providing one of those experiences where honesty and heaviness can’t be dissociated. Despite contemplative on occasion, it carries this subtly underlying tension that bites consistently. Because Gonzalez isn't afraid to convey the deep concerns, insecurities and strengths of these women, you immediately know the film is going to give you something. Cinematographer Gerardo Guerra assists him by extracting natural lyricism from the visual compositions.

The Box (2022)

Direction: Lorenzo Vigas
Country: Venezuela / Mexico / USA

In Lorenzo Vigas’ The Box, a Mexican teenager (Hatzin Navarrete) sets out to collect his deceased father belongings and ends up taking part in the underworld machine of immigration and exploitation. At first, he’s left twisting in the wind in a strange land, with the doubt if his father really died. Soon, he learns the business with the man (Hernán Mendoza) he suspects changed his identity and abandoned him and his family without looking back. 

The film, as piercing as an internal scream of despair, warrants a response to the darkest realities of Mexico, tackling a sensitive theme through a brainy story punctuated with some surprises. The biggest amusement of this unsentimental tale of hope turned disenchantment is to see how this clever kid observes his surroundings and deals with each different situation.

This same subject was addressed with less issues in films such as Identifying Features and Prayers for the Stolen. Yet, even discreet and imbued with some strangeness, The Box still digs its own path within this particular drama subgenre. It caused me to ponder on the nature of each human being by making simple emotions complex, and complex questions impossible to answer.

The Other Tom (2022)

Direction: Rodrigo Plá, Laura Santullo
Country: Mexico

Husband and wife Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo have been working together since 2007 with successful results - he as a director; she as a screenwriter and occasionally producer - making the Uruguayan cinema more appealing. Titles such as The Zone (2007), The Delay (2012) and A Monster With a Thousand Heads (2015) put on display what they are capable of. Their latest drama, The Other Tom, marks the first time they share directorial duties.

The story brings into view the difficulties of Elena (Julia Chavez), a hardworking single mother who depends on the social services to eke out a living. Her life wouldn’t be so tumultuous if her nine-year-old son, Tom (Israel Rodriguez), didn’t have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome). The kid, besides being sidelined at school, is treated with inadequate medication with dangerous side effects. What he wishes the most is to see his father (Rigo Zamarron) again, who keeps promising him a visit for three years. 

The Other Tom disappoints when it comes to pacing and sins for its length, but we must recognize in Plá and Santullo a fierce desire to battle the system and its injustices. Faithful to a naturalistic approach, the pair combines the inclusion of the sordid cruelty of reality and a certain candidness found in the mother-son relationship without taking much advantage of that. Their register is cadenced and lukewarm, and there’s almost no climax. 

Halfway through, the film spirals into a decrescendo of plot arcs that make it repetitive. Incapable of claiming an original identity, this is, nonetheless, a finely crafted picture where family values and the courage to revert an erroneous decision are present.

Son of Monarchs (2021)

Direction: Alexis Gambis
Country: Mexico / USA

It’s not entirely by chance that Son of Monarchs, the sophomore feature film by the French-Venezuelan writer-director Alexis Gambis, employs biology and experimentation as notable elements surrounding the core drama. The director is a biologist as well as the founder and artistic director of the Imagine Science Film Festival.

The story revolves around Mendel (Tenoch Huerta), an up-and-coming Mexican biologist living and working in New York, where he researches and modifies pigments, scales and patterns of butterflies’ wings. His passion for and commitment to these animals come from childhood. In his Michoacán hometown village, he was often transfixed while observing a whole bunch of monarch butterflies in the company of his older brother, Simon (Noé Hernández). Regretfully, he and his brother broke ties since he departed to the US.

Many years have passed since then, and only the death of his dear grandmother (Angelina Peláez) compels Mendel to return. His brother is still resentful, and the traumas of the past promptly surface. They’ve been serious obstacles in his life, and we are told that in two occasions: when his work lands on the cover of a prominent science magazine and when he meets Sarah (Alexia Rasmussen) in New York, a woman he’s attracted to. Mendel’s volatile mood rings true. He seems unable to fully enjoy his achievements without resolving the inner complexities that have been tormenting him. 

There's a poetic rhythm and sensitive touch to the bittersweet melancholic tone, and the fact that the film displays less perspective shifts than many films within the genre is not a problem. What works less well in this hybrid slice of life is the articulation within the structure and the reconnection scene between the brothers, whose awkwardness removed any sort of emotion.

Nonetheless, I slouched back with my head resting on the top of the seat because this is not a stressful watching but a contained, introspective experience that stresses issues like social identity and trauma. Considering all the facts, the low-key Son of Monarchs is passable.

Prayers For the Stolen (2021)

Direction: Tatiana Huezo
Country: Mexico

Turned into a remarkably straightforward and effective drama film by the El Salvador-born documentarian Tatiana Huezo (Tempestad, 2016), Prayers for the Stolen is a successful screen adaptation of Jennifer Clement's novel of the same name. The film tells the story of Ana (Marya Membreño) and her two friends - Maria (Giselle Barrera Sánchez) and Paula (Alejandra Camacho) - who are strictly forbidden to act and dress like girls. They are forced to cut their hairs like a boy and need to hide underground whenever cars approach their houses. 

This infuriating story, set in the Mexican mountain village of San Miguel (where they explode the mountains and the telephone signal is limited to the outskirts), set mothers and daughters to be incessantly alert against savaging kidnappers, rapists and extortionists who operate beyond the law. The kidnappings of young girls are recurrent, and their absent fathers, all living and working in bigger cities to send money home, are not there to defend them. Ana’s mother (Mayra Batalla), a worker in a small poppy field who is often consumed by sadness, has to show a firm hand as she trains her daughter to prevent and escape threatening situations. There’s a special language between them but that’s not always a guarantee. 

The restlessness of Prayers for the Stolen never ebbs and that makes for a thoroughly entertaining, if somewhat exhausting, 110 minutes. Brilliantly composed, it finds beauty as well as ugliness in this part of Mexico, a place where the cartel enforcement and the violence steal the innocence of the local female teens, depriving them of freedom and a proper life.

A Cop Movie (2021)

Direction: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Country: Mexico 

Alonso Ruizpalacios’s A Cop Movie is a didactic docufiction that brings to the center two Mexican police officers from Mexico City. The film doesn’t play with stereotypes, preferring an experimental approach that, blurring the line between reality and fiction, leaves the viewers questioning what’s to be a “true" cop and what’s their role in the society.

By making a clever use of structure and employing an artful narrative, Ruizpalacios (Gueros, 2014; Museo, 2018) offers a raw, sometimes funny glimpse into the discredited Mexican police force, stressing their (de)motivations and daily struggles in the performance of their jobs. 

Teresa (Monica del Carmen), whose apparently dismissive father was also a cop, is 34 and spent half of her life as a police officer. Her partner in life and at work, Montoya (Raul Briones), is unsmiling while on duty and only joined the law enforcement unit because of his brother. In addition to depict them in several difficult situations in the streets - including a stagey arrest, a strained childbirth, an altercation with a big shot, and dealing with bribery - the film also addresses their family problems, emphasizing the joys and the pathos of living and working together.

The first two acts are competently mounted and astutely joined; the third - about the couple - is the most redundant; while the last two - when the actors reveal themselves and the real-life officers speak truth to power - are precious. 

There’s a clunkiness to A Cop Movie, which, nonetheless, delivers a unique 107-minute distraction.

Tragic Jungle (2021)

Direction: Yulene Olaizola
Country: Mexico

A supernatural thriller entirely shot in the jungle about the femme fatale Xtabay - a Yucatec Maya myth - brings so many possibilities to mind that it’s hard not to feel excited about it. However what was presented here by director Yulene Olaizola (Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies, 2008; Artificial Paradises, 2011) was powerless, with an overwhelming absence of mystery and a dormant storytelling.

Although regarded as an exercise in mood, the film employs crumbles of surrealism and folklore in an ineffective way, with the story rambling in circles with no apparent direction before throwing a bland conclusion at us.

The year is 1920, and Agnes (Indira Rubie Andrewin), trying to escape an arranged marriage with a malicious Englishman (Dale Carley), crosses the border between Mexico and Belize with a friend and a guide. Surviving a vicious attack by her intended husband, she is later found by a group of gum collectors led by Ausencio (Gilberto Barraza), who like the others, becomes under the spell of her beauty. In addition to a cold and fearless posture, the smile of Agnes - ranging between flirtatious to cynical - incites the fantasies of the men, who easily succumb to her power by losing their sense of direction.

Sloppy in the period details, unproductive in terms of tension and lacking character depth, the film never really explores the sense of danger, and even less the sense of adventure that could have arisen from a story of this nature. Olaizola's excess of control prevented Tragic Jungle from achieving an identity as something scary or profound. To be frank, I couldn’t find one single original idea in this shapeless movie. 

Identifying Features (2021)

Direction: Fernanda Valadez
Country: Mexico

In Fernanda Valadez’s heartbreaking debut feature, Identifying Features, a 48-year-old woman called Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) sets off to the border between Mexico and the US in a desperate attempt to track down her missing son, Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela). During the perilous route that takes her from Guanajuato to a forbidden rural zone called ‘La Fragua’, she comes across with another woman in the same situation and a deported young man, Miguel (David Illescas), who returns to his village to see his mother. Then she visits an elderly Indian Mexican, a survivor of a bus assault, who might know what happened to her son.

Sorely meditative and minimally composed, the film carries an enormous emotional weight in each frame. The spiky script, co-written by Valadez and Astrid Rondero (they also edited and produced), steadily cranks up its social and emotional charge, at the same time that, even without providing any answer, makes us inquire about Mexico’s unremitting violence. Hernández shines particularly convincing as the unsettling scenes capture the tormenting reality of Mexico’s several degrees of inhumanity.

Identifying Features is a harrowing tale of loss, anguish and disenchantment whose brutally cold conclusions left me stunned.

I'm No Longer Here (2020)

Direction: Fernando Frias
Country: Mexico / USA

Fernando Frias’ I’m No Longer Here chronicles a typical immigrant song centered on an atypical character. 17-year-old Ulises Sampiero (Daniel Garcia Treviño) has a passion for cumbia dance and leads a non-violent gang called Los Terkos in the slums of Monterrey, Mexico. Wearing large clothes and boasting a peculiar hair style that brings me back some Japanese Manga characters, Ulises takes care of a bunch of young people in the tough streets of his neighborhood. However, an altercation with a member of another gang takes him to Queens, New York. 

The American dream simply didn’t work for him. Undocumented, homeless and with no steady job, Ulises can only rely on his friends Lin (Angelina Chen), a 16-year-old who seems excited to meet him, and Gladys (Adríana Arbelaez), a Colombian prostitute who likes the same music as him. 

Presented in a non-chronological way, the film is culturally interesting, but becomes a frustrating viewing as it advances. The developments are slow, deliberate and mournful, and even throwing the music factor in the mix, the tone remains austere, the expressiveness limited and the articulation of the scenes too calculated.

I felt some closeness with the fact that Ulises got caught in a mess that makes him unfit for New York and his hometown alike, but at the same time I struggled with the torpid aimlessness that marks the story. Not lost, but bored in translation and discontent with the excessive dance scenes. Nevertheless, I still think there’s something to be found here.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2019)

Direction: Issa Lopez
Country: Mexico

Mexican writer/director Issa López has in Tigers Are Not Afraid her most compelling work. Having a hard time to fully engage during the initial low-key dramatic realism, Lopez gives the story a strange path and makes it evolve into a crescendo. In truth, the tale plays a much better game after transfiguring into an eerie ghost story. It also boasts this baffling mix of surrealism and symbolism throughout, like in a dark fairytale, without compromising the director’s sort of sneaky self-confidence in aiming at the unbearable, widening violence in Mexico.

With a devastated Mexico City as a backdrop, the film centers on the sensitive 10-year-old Estrella (Paola Lara), who joins a group of orphaned kids led by El Shine (Juan Ramón López). After their parents have disappeared and some houses destroyed, they live on the streets, looking out for food and finding shelter at abandoned places. During a cartel-related shooting outside her school, Estrella was conceded three pieces of chalk, each of them representing a magical wish, but they only seem to trigger unsettling stuff such as haunting visions of her dead mother, creepy augurs, and fantastic metaphoric signals.

The process of finding a proper balance between drama, surrealism and horror was a tremendous challenge, but Lopez, even if not really exceptional in that mission, was able to create an entertaining tale, deeply unnerving in concept and featuring a few decent chills.

Our Time (2019)

Direction: Carlos Reygadas
Country: Mexico / other

The films of Mexican Carlos Reygadas are structured with enough existentialism and spiritual vision to present challenges to the viewer. I’m remembering how much Japón (2002), Post Tenebras Lux (2012), and especially Silent Light (2007), generated discussion, marking the international cinema with enduring long shots prone to emotionally intriguing reflection.

The director’s new work, Our Time, is a nearly 3-hour examination of a complex, undermined open marriage between Juan (played by Reygadas himself), an arrogant cattle rancher and poet, and Ester (Natalia Lopez, Reygadas’ real-life spouse), a free-spirited mother of three who is fed up with her obligation to report her secret encounters with Phil (Phil Burgers), an American horse trainer temporarily hired to work at the ranch, to her scrupulous husband. With the passage of time, the tension grows exponentially and mistrust envelops the couple's doomed relationship. The story is partially narrated by a kid’s voice and includes letter and e-mail readings as well as phone call conversations.

Squeezed in the middle of these lives marked by obsession, voyeurism, carnal desire, and ego, we have furious bull fights, which work as a metaphor for leadership and possession in the marital alliance but also as an exteriorization of all the tension accumulated throughout. Under a deceptively polished surface, there’s a lot of emotional fractures, whose delineation, despite valid, won’t appeal to everyone’s tastes.

Reygadas stumbles in this quiet yet powerfully acted tale of love, loyalty, and exasperation, where one pokes around vainly in search of something more than just the facts.

In Juan’s words: ‘love is resilient and imperfect’ and, in some way, that’s what a much less ambiguous Reygadas intends to substantiate here. However, he couldn’t handle this bull by the horns, stretching the time into an absurd extent in order to tell a story that never showed plenitude of heart.

Museo (2018)

Direction: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Country: Mexico

Museo, the sophomore feature from Mexican writer/director Alonso Ruizpalacios, is a gorgeously shot, character-driven heist film inspired by the 1985 Christmas Eve robbery of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It is only occasionally that its mild tones go beyond the expected, yet even so, it stands as a low-key fun overall with some refreshing takes on the genre.

Gael Garcia Bernal stars as thirty-something Juan Nunez, a college dropout with a sharp taste for and massive knowledge of anthropology. Moreover, Juan is subversive, selfish, and manipulative, a man capable of driving crazy not just the members of his family, but also Benjamin Wilson (Leonardo Ortizgris), his submissive college mate, follower, and best friend. Ambition is another important feat of his personality and that’s why he decided to steal invaluable Inca pieces from the National Museum of Anthropology, where he used to work part-time to pay his leisure time. His idea consists of escaping from the boring suburbs and the control of his vehement father, Dr. Nunez (Alfredo Castro). He and his friend just dreamt of building their own paradise. Sounds great, right?

Christmas Eve means celebration and, consequently, implies critical breaches in the museum’s security. Juan and Benjamin knew exactly what they wanted to pick. Among the stolen pieces is the funerary mask of King Pakal, which, by itself, makes them multimillionaires. Nonetheless, what seemed obvious to them becomes shrouded in uncertainty, and what should be the simplest part of the plan - selling the art - becomes a nightmare. Juan had the courage to do it. Does he have the courage to fix it?

Ruizpalacios, who did a more consistent job in his 2014 debut drama Gueros, combines adventurous theft, archeology lessons, family aloofness, and a vitiated friendship all in one. The lens of cinematographer Damián García attractively captures all of this, but part of the energy accumulated during the journey wasn’t always canalized in the right direction. It wouldn’t hurt if the relationship between the two leads were further explored or if Juan’s night of excesses was depicted with a bit more creativity.

Roma (2018)

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Country: Mexico / USA

Versatility and competence are two valuable attributes of Mexican writer/director Alfonso Cuarón, demonstrated in peculiar works like Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), Children of Men (2006), and Gravity (2013). Yet, none of the above delivered so much personal intimacy and cinematic maturity as Roma, a flawlessly shot drama based on his childhood memories when he was living in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood in the early 1970s.

The story focuses on Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a humble Mixtec maid working for a middle-class family nearly shattered by the absence of its patriarch, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), a respected doctor. At the moment that this man decided to abandon the household, his wife Sofia (Marina de Tavira) takes the responsibility of raising four children with the priceless help of Cleo, who also shares other domestic duties with her co-worker Adela (Nancy García García).

The camera captures the routines and dynamics of the family through glorious black-and-white frames polished to compositional precision. The extraordinary cinematography is credited to the director himself, who also co-produced and co-edited. Concurrently, we follow Cleo’s personal problems with her boyfriend, Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), an immature thug from the slums and martial arts practitioner, who dumps her ruthlessly in the same minute she informs him about a possible pregnancy.

Taken by frustration and disappointment, the two vulnerable women lean on each other, forging a moving companionship where there is no place for social class stratification. All the guilt, trauma, and pain are attenuated by the love and warmth within the family, regardless of the difficulties that might exist. Sofia and Cleo are brave women, whom Cuarón wanted to thank and honor. And he did it marvelously.

The simple and realistic storytelling discloses individual complexities that made me care for these characters with all my soul. The touching finale is one of the most powerful scenes of a deeply humane film where hope triumphs in times of adversity.

While the performances are immaculately genuine, Cuarón’s unparalleled direction convinced me in every aspect since he never loses focus with trivialities. Every scene is there for a purpose, not by chance. Despite the evocation of another time, connections with the current state of the world can also be established in Roma, an illuminated tale of gratitude and one of the most gratifying experiences I’ve had this year in a theater.

The Untamed (2017)

Directed by Amat Escalante
Country: Mexico / other

The work of Mexican director Amat Escalante has been considered as provocative, violent, and emotionally disturbing. This was mirrored in “Heli”, with which he won Cannes' best director, and it’s easily observable again in his latest feature “The Untamed”, a risky piece of cinema that borrows some influence from Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession”. It gave him another reputed best-director prize, this time in Venice.

Embracing that similar depressing atmosphere as in his previous work, Escalante raises expectation for this one as he adds elements of sci-fi and erotica to pepper a solid family drama. This combination, not always successful but undeniably trendy, should bring him some more followers. Still, this disquieting canvas painted in dark hues may repulse the most sensitive ones through the gloominess that encircles the story from minute one.

The film, written by Escalante and Gibran Portela, follows two different stories that converge at some point. Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is a dedicated mother of two who lost sexual attraction for her knavish husband, Angel (Jesús Meza). She keeps showing signs of tiredness due to his improper ways, heavy drinking, as well as possessive behavior. In fact, she has every reason to be concerned because Angel, who adopts a homophobic posture in front of her, is having a homosexual affair with Alejandra’s nurse brother, Fabian (Eden Villavicencio). However, the latter is willing to discontinue these dishonorable encounters, especially after he meets Veronica (Simone Bucio), a young woman in need of special treatment due to a deep wound in her belly inflicted by a multiple-tentacle alien that landed on our planet with a meteorite.

This abhorrently weird creature relies on Mr. Vega (Oscar Escalante), a scientist, and his wife Marta (Bernarda Trueba), to find young women to fulfill its concupiscence. “It only gives pleasure and never hurts”, says Veronica, but this is only accurate until it gets tired of playing with the same person. The women who experience it, describe this bizarre yet addictive pleasure as sublime, attaining a primitive and pure state of the sexual act itself.

When Fabian falls into a coma due to a brutal sexual aggression, the mysterious tones of the story intensify while the doubts linger in our heads.

Even demanding my attention in several sections, this was not an attractive story at all, given that some of the images can be truly somber and disgusting. Besides, it doesn’t take you anywhere beyond the superficial.

Standing somewhere between the art-house explorations of Tsai Ming Liang and Brillante Mendoza, the film presents ever-shifting moods, going from the poignant drama to mild crime thriller to restrained sci-fi horror film. The topics are also diverse, touching homophobia, misogyny, hedonism, and human ignominy. 

Slippery and sly, “The Untamed” boasts some originality.  In spite of that, the extra-sensorial extraterrestrial fiction that Escalante tries to sell becomes more subfusc than scary as the film moves forward.

A Monster with a Thousand Heads (2016)

Directed by Rodrigo Plá
Country: Mexico

The title “A Monster with a Thousand Heads” can be deceitful in the way it might suggest one of those horror films based on fantasy instead of real life.
Actually, the well-written screenplay by Laura Santullo moves on the realistic side, focusing on an exasperating social problem that not only affects Mexico, the origin of this drama, but lots of other countries, including the capitalist USA. 
We’re talking about the human health and associated insurance companies that profit with what should be free for everybody.

The dramatic thriller depicts the affliction of a mother of two, Sonia Bonet (Jan Raluy), who desperately tries everything to save her husband, Memo (Daniel Cubillo), from a malignant tumor that advances slowly but lethally.
Despite the good news that he doesn’t have metastasis, the case is neglected, lacking the medical supervision and attention it deserves. For sixteen consecutive years, the couple has paid the insurer’s premium, yet the organization refuses to approve the treatment that can make him live.

Unresponsive doctors, an infuriating incompetence from the insurance company, infinite waiting, shameful lies, and immeasurable bureaucracy associated with a simple case, are all factors that drive Sonia to act drastically, having the support of her teenage son, Dario (Sebastián Aguirre), who follows her everywhere. 
Holding a gun in her hand and dragging the insurer’s CEO as a hostage, Sonia starts to collect all the signatures needed to get the treatment approved. Fighting the abusive Mexican system with the use of force makes her exposed to many dangers. Is it worth a try?

Despite the pertinence of the topic, the direction of the Uruguayan-Mexican Rodrigo Plá didn’t impress me as much as it happened with “The Delay”, a gripping drama dated from 2012.
Moreover, and regardless the good performances, a few scenes seemed a bit contrived to me, especially those involving situations of tribulation and panic.
This is an example of a good idea hampered by a flawed execution.

Chronic (2015)

Directed by Michel Franco
Country: Mexico / France

I can understand why the ‘best screenplay’ was given to “Chronic” at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, since this English-language drama, directed by the Mexican Michel Franco (“After Lucia”), is an intriguing character study. 
However, that same screenplay that gradually immerses us into the story, sharping our curiosity for such an unreadable character, loses its composure with a finale that deserved a better way out. 

“Chronic” also works as a showcase for Tim Roth’s acting skills. He plays the film’s central character, David Wilson (Roth), a home caring nurse who meticulously and passionately dedicates himself to terminally ill patients. The same proficiency that we already had the opportunity to observe in “Pulp Fiction”, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Four Rooms”, all by Tarantino, and Tornatore’s “The Legend of 1900”, was used.

David is extremely persevering and zealous in his work, but sometimes undisciplined in the eyes of the patients’ relatives. He takes care of them with such a resolute dedication that not everybody is able to understand. In spite of creating strong bonds with them - a sort of dependence, he never asks anything in return. It’s right to say that David needs his patients as much as they need him.
In a very particular case, he allows John (Michael Cristofer), an architect who had a severe stroke, to watch pornography on the computer in order to stimulate the senses and the body. This questionable behavior, when discovered by John’s children, cost him his job at the nursing agency and brings him a lawsuit founded on sexual harassment. 
Despite this maniacal devotion to work, David, who gets visibly bored at home, has serious problems in his private life, starting with his estranged daughter, Nadia (Sarah Sutherland), with whom he lost contact a long time ago and now tries to reconnect with.

Even carrying a touching humane side, the film is set in cheerless tones and becomes hard to watch due to its languid pace and raw approach. 
There’s a certain ambiguity, almost like a secret that we expect to be revealed, that keep us wanting to know more about David.
The ending, abrupt and unsatisfying, prevents “Chronic” from being a stronger achievement.