Lorna Irvine reviews the new 'thought-provoking, strange and insidious' film.
Carlos Reygadas' latest film is truly divisive- booed at the Cannes film festival, it nonetheless won him Best Director. It is easy to see why critics have been split- this is a film which is often indulgent and brutal, unafraid to linger on certain shots almost to the point of tedium, yet one which has many moments of languid beauty.
A hallucinatory, almost 3D effect renders the tone threatening, with disturbing imagery such as a neglected child alone in a field during a thunderstorm as animals run feral, or a red glowing animated demon walking like a portent of misfortune through a family's home. Alexis Zabe's cinematography is extraordinary, both naturalistic and dreamlike.
Middle-class Juan (Adolfo Jimenez Castro) and his family have moved to rural Mexico, but he feels out of place there. The two infants, Eleazar and Rut, are the real-life children of Reygadas and so many scenes are improvised and feel like a documentary. The perspectives shift from the parents to the children.
Unfortunately, central character Juan is one of the most odious characters to appear on the silver screen for quite some time: a patriarchal figure who is domineering, violent, and addicted to pornography, it is clear why he struggles to maintain a happy relationship with his long-suffering wife Nathalia (Nathalia Acevedo), a patient, loving and shy woman. When violence threatens their home, the pace changes altogether.
The abstraction and non-linear design of the film lends itself to contemplation, with Reygadas' vagaries never explained, such as shots of English boys playing rugby, or the reason the rooms in the miserable swingers' bath houses are named after artists and philosophers.
This film is something of an acquired taste, yet its maddening layers are also its strengths- thought-provoking, strange and insidious.
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