Mexico

BUY ME A GUN: children in the narcopolypse

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BUY ME A GUN. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

Tp honor Cinequest, now underway, here’s the best of the over thirty films that I reviewed at the 2019 Cinequest. The searing dystopian fable Buy Me a Gun takes place in an imaginary near future, in which Mexico’s conquest by narco cartels is so complete that all other institutions have collapsed.

Buy Me a Gun’s Mexico is a bandit society run by rival warlords and their fighters – a new feudal age with automatic weapons.  It’s a world of cruelty, where all the mothers and teen daughters have been taken by the cartels as sex slaves. And it’s a surreal Mexico, desolate of people, the population having dwindled due to lack of women.

The cartel fighters spend essentially all of their time in four pursuits: the drug trade, raiding for women and girls, partying and playing baseball.

We meet one surviving man who is not in a cartel. Rogelio (Rogelio Sosa) has been imprisoned by a cartel to perform as the groundskeeper of the baseball field at their base. Rogelio is addicted to drugs, and he knows that his life is subject to the whim of any of the fighters at any moment, particularly the terrifying and gender-ambiguous cartel commander (Sostenes Rojas).

While Rogelio walks the tightrope of narco murderers, he is hiding a high stakes secret in plain sight. He has a 10-year-old daughter Huck (Mathilde Hernandez) who he is protecting from the fighters by pretending that she is a boy. If the cartel fighters discover his ruse, he will certainly be killed and his daughter will certainly become a sex slave. Because he can’t escape (and there is no place to escape TO), this is Rogelio’s best option, as harrowing as it is.

Rogelio Sosa and Mathilde Hernandez in BUY ME A GUN. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

Huck is not the only child at the narco base – she has a pack of feral friends, some horribly disfigured from the environment of violence and the cartel’s cruelty.

While in the throes of his addiction, the groundskeeper is decent, resourceful and brave – devoted to his daughter in a hopeless situation. This is an extraordinary performance by Rogelio Sosa.

One childish mistake puts the dad and daughter in jeopardy. Will she escape the danger? Buy Me a Gun turns into a heart-pounding thriller.

Buy Me a Gun is written and directed by Julio Hernández Cordón, and it’s an impressive achievement, one of the most original films I’ve seen in this decade. One scene in particular, involving a trumpet and purple smoke to illustrate smoking drugs, is genius. Along with Huck, there are child characters that Hernández Cordón has named Tom and Sawyer.

The only crappy thing about Buy Me a Gun is its title, which would better fit a shallow crime movie than such a profound fable.

I screened Buy Me a Gun the 2019 Cinequest before its theatrical release in Mexico. At the 2020 Ariel awards (Mexico’s Oscars) , it garnered eight nominations including for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Sostenes Rojas. Buy Me a Gun is now is now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, and YouTube  

SUNDOWN: checked out, really checked out

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Photo capon: Tim Roth in SUNDOWN. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

In Sundown, Neil Bennett (Tim Roth) and the hard-charging CEO Alice Bennett (Charlotte Gainsbourg) are vacationing with two college age kids at a luxurious Acapulco resort. Their family matriarch unexpectedly dies and – of course! – they immediately head to the airport to organize the funeral in the UK. But Neil fakes an excuse and avoids getting on the plane, vowing to come along soon. Instead, he does the unthinkable and essentially hides out from the family.

Instead of returning to the resort, Neil moves into a downscale hotel near Acapulco’s public beach. Other than wandering to the beach to commandeer a plastic chair and an ice bucket of cerveza, Neil doesn’t do much for the rest of Sundown. Notably, he does make the acquaintance of a friendly local woman, Berenice (Iazua Larios). Berenice speaks very little English, and Neil speaks essentially no Spanish.

Iazua Larios in SUNDOWN. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Writer-director Michel Franco gradually unspins his tale, and we learn how the Bennetts are related and how wealthy they are. But Franco leaves it to us to figure out why Neil is behaving in this way. Is it just awful behavior – irresponsible and selfish? Is he suffering from a psychiatric or neurological disorder?

From the very beginning of Sundown, Neil’s affect is oddly detached and passive. Is he blissed out on vacation? Is he stoned? Bur he soon becomes bizarrely avoidant. And Neil is firmly purposeful in his detachment. A much better director than writer, Michel gives us so little back story, that we really don’t know how divergent Neil’s behavior is. The critic Mick LaSalle observes, “He consistently seems calmer than he should be, so we wonder what he knows.“.

In any case, Sundown is a portrait of a man who is checked out – for an unknown reason and to an explicable extent. We are curious and decidedly not empathetic; his withdrawal from normal obligations causes harm to others – others who at least deserve an explanation.

Sundown’s 82 minutes is hypnotic. Franco is a Mexico City native and brings verisimilitude to the contrasting tiers of Acapulco beach life.

Tim Roth is excellent as a man who is determined to get what he wants, even though what he wants is essentially nothing. Franco and Roth worked together on Chronic.

Iazua Larios is extraordinarily compelling as Berenice, who seems, well, very casual at first, and becomes more complicated. The character of Berenice starts out as an adornment, but she will become the ultimate test of whether there is any limit to Neil’s detachment.

Sundown is a paradox – an unenjoyable observation of an unsympathetic character doing nothing, yet an engaging portrait of an extreme and puzzling personality.

DANCE OF THE 41: overreaching while gay

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In the rapturously filmed period drama Dance of the 41, Mexican politician Ignacio de la Torre (Alfonso Herrera), a political Icarus if there ever were one, marries President Porfirio Diaz’s daughter Amada (Mabel Cadena). It’s the turn of the 20th Century, and de la Torre starts scheming with breathtaking recklessness.

The risk comes from the fact that de la Torre is in a secret club of gay aristocrats, closeted in plain sight in the most macho and homophobic mainstream culture. He has married Amada so she can be his beard, but his new bride, unaware of her new hubbie’s secret, was expecting her own sexual awakening. Instead, he spurns her for a torrid love affair with Evaristo (Emiliano Zurita).

De la Torre had married the boss’ daughter in a bid for advancement, expecting her to submit to being his pawn. But, hurt at not being desired, she calls on her dad’s capacity as an enforcer. It all culminates in a formal queer bacchanal that turns heartbreaking.

Dance of the 41 is a fictionalized (but very plausible) telling of a historical event, the salacious scandal called the “Dance of the Forty-One” or the “Ball of the Forty-One”.

I found the century-old story of Mexican LGBTQ history and the forbidden love between the men to be less interesting than the story between the husband and the young bride he had wildly underestimated. He is trapped because he’s gay and ambitious, but he is also a dick who is relying on male privilege to dismiss a young woman’s needs and aspirations and to cynically use her.

Director David Pablos and cinematographer Carolina Costa have created a visually extravagant film that makes use of its architecturally stunning locations. Much of Dance of the 41 takes place in gorgeously lit – candlelight.

I screened Dance of the 41 for the 2021 SFFILM. It is now streaming on Netflix.

SON OF MONARCHS: resolving his identity

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Photo caption: Tenoch Huerta in SON OF MONARCHS. Courtesy of SFFILM.

In the contemplative indie Son of Monarchs, things seem to be going well for the young biologist Mendel (Tenoch Huerta). His career as a scientist at an elite NYC institution seems to be starting well, his mentor respects and encourages him, his peers invite him to socialize and he’s dating a woman with a very unusual hobby. But something is not right, and it’s that Mendel’s very identity is unresolved,.

Mendel comes from rural Michoacán, which Nature has blessed with Monarch butterflies and cursed with disasters that traumatized Mendel in his childhood. The same childhood experiences have built his passion to understand life and have estranged him from his brother and their homeland. When he has occasion to revisit Michoacán, he can no longer compartmentalize his inner conflict.

SON OF MONARCHS. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Son of Monarchs is the second feature for writer-director Alexis Gambis, who makes the most out of the visual contrast between chilly NYC and the vivid warm of Michoacán.

Tenoch Huerta is very good as the somber, restless Mendel. Gabino Rodriguez (recently in the deadpan Fauna and a very scary villain in Sin Nombre) brightens the Michoacán segment.

I first saw Son of Monarchs at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It’s now streaming on HBO Max.

FAUNA: how droll can you get?

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Gabino Rodriguez and Luisa Pardo in Nicolás Pereda’s FAUNA. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

In Fauna, Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and her boyfriend Paco (Francisco Barreiro), both actors, visit Luisa’s remote Mexican hometown and meet up with her brother (Gabino Rodriguez), stepping into humor even drier than the parched landscape. They intend to visit Luisa’s parents (Teresa Sanchez and José Rodríguez López).

Paco wanders into the town, looking for some smokes. He meets an older man, who makes the encounter unnecessarily awkward. It turns out that the man was his girlfriend’s father.

Luisa runs some lines with her mom, and it’s clear to the audience that the mom is much better than the “professional actress”.

In the highlight of Fauna, the three guys go out for a beer. The dad is fascinated by Paco’s tiny role in a big episodic TV series and has him “perform” in the cantina. It’s a masterpiece of cringe humor and comic timing.

José Rodríguez López, always deadpan, is hilarious as Luisa’s dad. Where has this actor been? Despite being nominated for a 1991 Ariel (Mexico’s Oscar) for his first movie performance, Fauna is only his seventh feature film.

More than halfway though, Fauna pivots. Luisa’s brother has been reading a mystery , and the film begins to mirror the book. The deadpan continues throughout all of Fauna’s 70 minutes.

Mexican-born writer-director Nicolás Pereda lives in Toronto, and Fauna competed as a Canadian film at the Toronto Film Festival.

I screened Fauna at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It’s been released into some theaters, but is hard to find.

499: the legacy of Mexico’s Original Sin

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499. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

In director and co-writer Rodrigo Reyes’ highly original docu-fable 499, one of Hernán Cortés’ soldiers (Eduardo San Juan Breñais) is transported centuries into the future and plunged into contemporary Mexico. The movie’s title reflects a moment 499 years after Cortés’ conquest of the Aztecs in 1520; the conquistador and the audience discover that the dehumanization inherent in colonialism has persisted to plague modern Mexico.

I’m calling Reyes’ medium a “docu-fable” because it is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable).

Cast upon a Veracruz beach after a shipwreck (but 500 years later), the conquistador is terribly disoriented, and retraces Cortés’ march from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan/Mexico City. Seeing everything with a 500 year old lens, he is initially disgusted that the Indians that he conquered are now running things.

Soon he finds a Mexico reeling from narco terror. He meets Mexicans who have been victimized by the cruel outrages of the drug cartels, those risking their lives to hop a northbound train, and those in prison. In the emotional apex of 499, one mother’s account of a monstrous atrocity, clinical detail by clinical detail, is intentionally unbearable.

Reyes wants the audience to connect the dots from Mexico’s Original Sin – a colonialism that was premised on devaluing an entire people and their culture. Will the conquistador find his way to contrition?

499, with its camera sometimes static, sometimes slowly panning, is contemplative. Cinematographer: Alejandro Mejía’s work won Best Cinematography at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

499 opens at San Francisco’s Roxie on September 3 with Rodrigo Reyes in attendance, and will play the Roxie for a week before its national rollout.

499: the legacy of Mexico’s Original Sin

by
499. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

In director and co-writer Rodrigo Reyes’ highly original docu-fable 499, one of Hernán Cortés’ soldiers (Eduardo San Juan Breñais) is transported centuries into the future and plunged into contemporary Mexico. The movie’s title reflects a moment 499 years after Cortés’ conquest of the Aztecs in 1520; the conquistador and the audience discover that the dehumanization inherent in colonialism has persisted to plague modern Mexico.

I’m calling Reyes’ medium a “docu-fable” because it is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable).

Cast upon a Veracruz beach after a shipwreck (but 500 years later), he conquistador is terribly disoriented, and retraces Cortés’ march from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan/Mexico City. Seeing everything with a 500 year old lens, he is initially disgusted that the Indians that he conquered are now running things.

Soon he finds a Mexico reeling from narco terror. He meets Mexicans who have been victimized by the cruel outrages of the drug cartels, those risking their lives to hop a northbound train, and those in prison. In the emotional apex of 499, one mother’s account of a monstrous atrocity, clinical detail by clinical detail, is intentionally unbearable.

Reyes wants the audience to connect the dots from Mexico’s Original Sin – a colonialism that was premised on devaluing an entire people and their culture. Will the conquistador find his way to contrition?

499, with its camera sometimes static, sometimes slowly panning, is contemplative. Cinematographer: Alejandro Mejía’s work won Best Cinematography at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

499 releases into theaters on August 20, and will play San Francisco’s Roxie in early September, before its national rollout.

NUDO MIXTECO: three women, three dramas

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A scene from Angeles Cruz’s NUDO MEXTECO. Photo courtesy of SFFILM

In Nudo Mixteco, we visit an indigenous Mixtec village in Southern Mexico and get three dramas for the price of one. It’s the annual festival, and three long-absent locals return home. One is there for her mom’s funeral. another to intervene in her daughter’s welfare and the third has just decided that’s time to come back home.

Nudo is Spanish for “knot”, and the three stories form a loose braid. As in Kieślowski’s Blue/Red/White, the characters in each plot thread can be spotted in the others.

In each story, the women face constraints of patriarchy and traditional culture. An out lesbian has built a life in the city, but her father in the village cannot accept her sexuality, and even blames it for her mother’s death. Another woman also works in the city, and has left her daughter to be cared for by her sister in the village; reports of the daughter’s behavior trigger concern stemming from the mom’s own childhood sexual abuse.

In the third story, a village man has been working in the US. He had promised his wife that he would be gone six months, but it’s been three years. He expects that he can resume their lives as before, but his wife has moved on. Each feels betrayed by the other, and the village is convened to reach a community decision on a just outcome.

Nudo Mixteco is the debut feature for writer-director Angeles Cruz, who has won Ariels (Mexico’s Oscars) for her short films. Cruz is an accomplished actress, who was nominated for a best actress Ariel in 2018.

I screened Nudo Mixteco at SFFILM, where it won a jury award.

A scene from Angeles Cruz’s NUDO MEXTECO. Photo courtesy of SFFILM

AGUA ROSA: what are they to each other?

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Lizzy Auna and Axel Arenas in AGUA ROSA. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

The Mexican drama Agua Rosa begins with a young couple heading to stay a few days at an isolated property. We first see them mostly in long shot, often from the back, with very little dialogue, and we need to connect our own dots. Who are they? Why are they here? What are they to each other? That last question is what Agua Rosa is all about.

Mauricio (Axel Arenas) has inherited the place from his father and he’s settling the estate with his significant other Ana (Lizzy Auna). Mauricio is angry at his dad for abandoning his mom, so he’s unhappy and not fun to be around. His anger is leaking on Ana, and I kept hoping “don’t blow it with her by being such a jerk”. But maybe he’s also unhappy with something in their relationship…

Agua Rosa is co-written and co-directed by Miguel López Valdivia and Ca Silva (together credited as Antónimo). It’s their first feature film. They are able to make a languid pace work because Agua Rosa is only 71 minutes long.

The filmmakers use long shots and shots of long duration to emphasize the couple’s isolated setting and the potential isolation from each other. This makes the tight closeups at the climax all the more powerful.

I screened Agua Rosa for its world premiere at Cinequest; you can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.

ANA’S DESIRE: a transgressive slow burn

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ANA’S DESIRE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the Mexican sexual psychodrama Ana’s Desire, Ana (Laura Agorreca) is a conscientious working single mom. She is unsettled by the sudden appearance of her shady younger brother Juan (David Calderón León), who has been out of contact for years. With his motorcycle and his subversion of Ana’s bedtime and dietary routines, Juan becomes that Way Cool, fascinating uncle to Ana’s son Mateo (Ian Garcia Monterrubio).

It turns out that Ana and Juan had a tough childhood, having been raised by a less-than-ideal widowed father. They became very close then, and Ana’s visit back to their hometown rekindles old memories and deep-rooted feelings.

What is going on here between Ana and Juan? Writer-director Emilio Santoyo lets the audience connect the dots in a slow burn compressed into only 80 minutes. The ending pays off.

Cinequest hosts the US Premiere of Ana’s Desire.

https://youtu.be/cSrnbLQdRH8