Unfortunately Tremors carries the same name as a much more famous B-movie monster film from Hollywood. However, whilst they’re vastly different, they do share one thing in common: they’re both tongue-in-cheek comedies. Instead of laughing at the absurd huge worm like monsters in the 1990’s American version, you can laugh at the absurd response to the outing of a closeted gay man embedded in an upper class family life in Guatemala. It’s fun watching their stiff upper lips curl in long periods melodramatic weeping. The extremist gay conversion therapy that Pablo’s devout catholic family force him to attend to keep them together takes the satire to another level. All we can do is enjoy the levels the family goes to in order to hide their shame. Pablo’s out-and-proud lover is the only sane person in the film and watches Pablo’s family bewildered like us as it slowly disintegrates.
Jose flew under the radar when it was released in a select few cinemas in the U.S. in early 2020. Perhaps not surprising given that this is a humble independent film about marginalized youth in Guatemala. It’s also characteristically understated. Close up shots and dialogue are equally rare as Li Cheng shoots the film more like an observational documentary than romantic drama, watching Jose move around Guatemala City from a distance.
Jose’s life is similarly humble; he lives with his doting mother in a dingy room and scraps together a meager living directing cars towards a fast food restaurant. Jose’s relationships with mother and lover provide the main drama in the film. His brief flings offer him brief moments of freedom to be himself, in a society where his sexuality isn’t welcome.
I Carry You With Me is an epic cross generational, border crossing love story that hops between Puebla in Mexico and New York in the USA. It’s shot across three time periods: the present in NY, the past in Puebla, and the distant past reflected in childhood memories. The majority of the film takes place in the middle where Ivan and Gerardo meet. It contains the bulk of the film’s emotion and narrative. However, the cuts to the present imbue it with nostalgia by situating it in the past. It makes it feel like a dream period for the couple that contrasts with the uncertainty of their lives in the present.
The style also contributes to the dream like qualities of the middle period. Like Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Heidi Ewing uses a lot of color filters to imbue warmth and feeling to I Carry You With Me. Instead of warm reds and oranges, there’s greens, oranges, and blues that create a world that feels unique and special. It captures the excitement of their romance. Also like In The Mood for Love, there’s food. A plate of Chile en Nogada replaces a bowl of hot steaming noodles. Chile en Nogada being one of Puebla and Mexico’s most iconic dishes and one that is notoriously hard to make. It both situates their romance and symbolizes their love.
The portrayal of Puebla also challenges the typical American Dream narrative presented in U.S.-Mexico films. It depicts a Mexican city full of warmth, beauty, and life to contrast with the lonely, bleak, coldness of New York. In this film, the U.S. is not the land of opportunity that it is often depicted to be. Instead of leaving to escape poverty, they leave for the opportunity to start a new life.
I Carry You With Me is not without it’s own cliches. There’s the gay guy with the female best friend and another who’s best friend is a flamboyant drag queen. Then there’s the haunting memories of the first time their fiercely patriarchal families put them down. Obviously not all families in Mexico are like this, and whilst I don’t doubt these events happened to the real Ivan and Gerardo, they feel like exploitative throw in scenes designed to evoke sympathy and emotion. However, despite the cliches,I Carry You With Me is a brilliantly romantic portrayal of generation and border crossing love.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
Pornomelancholia is a slow paced character study of a up-and-coming porn star navigating the Mexican porn industry. It has plenty of dry humor and an underlying commentary on social media culture.
The film starts with a mid-range shot of Lalo standing alone by a busy street in the city. People walk past him and cars pass behind him as we watch him peer around. It seems like he’s waiting for someone or taking a breather in a chaotic day. However, before the shot lingers further, Lalo breaks down into a soft sob as the title credits pop up: Pornomelancholia. It’s a prelude for the critique of superficial influencer-culture that Lalo uses to make his way into the porn industry.
Lalo is portrayed as a lonely man parading as a popular sex icon. His Instagram videos hide the fact that he works in a small factory with two other people that he hardly talks to. His confidence in his sexuality online contradicts his inability to come out to his family – shown in the rehearsed voice messages he can’t bring himself to send to his mother. It follows films such as Sweat in showing that the digital lives promoted by influencers don’t always reflect reality.
Despite the underlying commentary, there is dry humor in Pornomelancholia. This is probably the only film that you can watch that is built around a Zapata led Mexican revolution porn film. It also probably runs on for too much of the film, but the pornographic shots, which linger for more than expected are designed to make you awkwardly uncomfortable (like Lalo himself). The sex scenes are provocative, but not as outrightly as another Mexican festival film – Battle in Heaven.
Overall, if you’re looking for a slow-paced festival film that follows a gay man working his way into the porn industry, Pornomelancholia is worth a watch. Whilst the culture fostered by the industry and Lalo is portrayed as fake, his journey feels unique, real and believable.
The Fabulous Ones is a warm home-made story featuring real friends reuniting to relive their memories from 30 years ago. The drama comes from a fictionalized will of one of their old friends, but the personal, real stories provide the substance for this docufiction.
From the tone of the film, it feels like most of this film is a documentary. The characters all get along too closely for it to feel fictionalized. However, the director uses different film types to blur the past and present, and also reality and fiction. Sepia-tinted film makes some shots feel old – as if shot 30 years ago in the character’s past – and these are edited alongside clearer shots to indicate the present. Some scenes also alternate between these two types of film to make it unclear what is fictionalized and true to reality, such as the seance and re-enactment of their ‘dead’ friend. The blurring of reality and fiction and past and present through the type of film also fictionalizes their pre-transition lives. Home footage and photos of the characters pre-transition, look like the scenes of the seance, making their pasts feel less real than the present.
Whilst their pre-transition lives are made to feel like the fictionalized parts of this documentary, The Fabulous Ones doesn’t shy away from sharing the characters’ real experiences as Trans-women. Throughout their reunion, the camera focuses on each character to hear their queer coming of age experience and how their individual families and the society around them reacted. These scenes draws you closer to the characters by sharing their more intimate experiences, and in doing so, holds the film back from going full happy-dream with the fictionalized elements of the film. These moments ground the film in the unfortunate reality that not everyone is able to be who they are without prejudice.
If you’re looking for a quirky docufiction that lightly explores some heavy personal experiences through a fictionalized will left by a ‘dead’ friend, this film is for you.
You must be logged in to post a comment.