Well, I must be returning to the multiplex. An arthouse flick? In Spanish? And I saw it on in a matinee where I was the only one there? Oh yeah. Say what you will about AMC, but they do occasionally bring in the foreign films with the subtitles that I otherwise wouldn’t see.
Besides, this sounded interesting enough to check out.
After a few odd clips showing splashes of green paint and piles of corpses, we cut to a wedding for a wealthy family in Mexico. Bride Marianne (Naian Gonzalez Novind) takes pity on a former employer. There a massive series of protests going on in another part of the city, and one former employee named Rolando (Eligio Meléndez) found his wife hustled out of the public hospital when the woman needs a replacement heart valve or else. He came by the ask Marianne’s family for money, and while her mother is willing to give him less than a quarter of what he needs, Marianne, despite the fact netiehr Rolando nor his wife worked for her family for years, decides to go over to his house with another employee, Christian (Fernando Cuautle), to personally get Rolando’s wife into a private hospital in order to get that life changing surgery. Not longer after she and Christian depart, the protests reach her parents’ house, revealing many of the security agents and servants are involved in the protests, and leading to the killing of some of the wealthy attendees but mostly robbing and vandalizing the place. Marianne stayed hidden at Rolando’s house until the following day when she herself is taken away by…well, that would be telling.
Now, it isn’t really that much of a surprise that a movie like this would exist and show how income inequality might breed resentment and violence from the lower classes to the upper classes. However, as much as the movie starts off that way, it would be inaccurate to say that is the entire movie. True, Marianne suffers many indignities and worse from her captors while Rolando, Christian, and Christian’s mother Marta (Mónica Del Carmen), none of whom took part in the protest and all of whom worked at one time or another deal with their own problems involving martial law put into place in the aftermath of the protests. Marianne’s own surviving family, despite living in a new house, don’t seem to have seen much change in their lives, and the implication is the ones who are really suffering are the people who actually tried to really help each other out, displayed a conscience, or at least never really considered violence.
What the film does well is also imply if not outright state that what is happening in this fictional version of Mexico may have been the work of individuals with even more power than Marianne’s family. What we saw of her family suggested many were at worst apathetic to the problems of the poor, but they weren’t actively out to take away the lives and possessions of those underneath them economically. They were essentially apathetic. Meanwhile, Marta, Christian, and the otherwise nonviolent working class were finding their own lives increasingly regimented in ways that just made things for them all the more dangerous. What caused the protests in the first place in the movie is never really revealed, and the rich will turn out OK no matter what (provided they lived through the protests), but for everyone else caught in the crossfire, to say nothing of those who found themselves rounded up after the fact, it was a nightmare with what can only be described as a predictable outcome.
I thought this movie was put together well, and while the events that happened during the movie may not have been overly shocking–very little of what happened to Marianne, Rolando, Christian, or Marta surprised me in the end–that doesn’t change the overall theme that some people will always use chaos to their advantage. This was more than a simple rich vs. poor story. This was ruthlessness vs. common decency, and the film suggests that common decency may not be cut out for this fight.
Grade: A
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