Drama/Mex

Definitely the best film I saw at Cannes. Mexican cinema is really coming a long way right now, and this film was even better than Tu Mama Tambien. The director filmed the whole thing with a hand-held video camera and amateur actors (who were his friends). His approach gives the film a real gritty feeling, keeping clean of that "hollywood smell". His shots are beautiful and graceful, as is the story. It was filled with emotion, drama (obviously), and strong characters. It compels you to continue watching, without even being really sure what the plot/point is. It is a film that inspires hope in life (and life's little unexpected and unwanted surprises) and encourages us all to view beauty and innocence where we can find it, because it is so often lacking. For a film that was created essentially without a budget, it rivals and often surpasses those Hollywood blowouts that lose the essence of film making in a drive for commercial success. I strongly recommend Drama/Mex to anyone who also enjoys independent cinema and beautiful films, and pray that it comes out on DVD in the states sometime soon.

The best Mexican FILM for the last 8 years. A lesson to Reygadas and other ART filmmakers, it shows that you can go to Cannes as a consequence of your talent, not to your skills as a provocation seller.

A lesson to commercial directors and producers, I dare them to touch and entertain the audience like this film does.

Mexican cinema needs to encourage this kind of artists, we have to stop spending millions of dollars making trash, Lets do 10 of this beautiful human experiences instead of one big meaningless bullshit.

Naranjo and guys like Iván Avila, Julian Hernandez, Fernando Eimbcke and other newcomers deserve to shoot something every year

Thanks for the effort...

Looking forward the next films of Naranjo.

I saw some reviewer berate this movie at length and thus created this account so I can write in and say NO WAY.... This is definitely among the BEST Mexican movies I've seen for a while. There's definitely a class effect, as it seems to depict the "good life" as being a wealthy one as well, but damn. It took the heartaches of youth and developed them in three dimensions. And the craziness, stupidity. This film will bring you back -- Fantastic. Emotional. Proof that buried into the masculine psyche there is a deep emotion. A yearning hopelessly intertwined with erotic love, and all the agony that goes with it. Definitely among the ones that proudly stand out among the Mexican films to come out in the past few years. I recommend it!

I have to admit I watched this film by mistake. I was checking previews on pay per view, and it seemed interesting but not enough for the $5.99 they charge. But then I pressed the wrong button and I found myself, regretfully, watching it. I hoped until the end it would go somewhere with the characters but it didn't. It reminded me a lot of "Amores perros" another film whose popularity I still cannot understand . Interconnected stories!!??? First of all, what stories? Yeah, they all happen in the same town and this town has a beach, so people end up there...oh, I forgot to mention that the stories happen in a hot day so the actors in these interconnected stories are all sweating, so there is some connection. I agree with other reviews, the camera work was interesting at the beginning but as the story became a bore, it made the film even more difficult to watch. The music (Beethoven on guitar) was so cliché that by the end I was keeping myself amused by guessing when would it start playing.

Fairly early on in this film I had this dreaded thought: the central characters lack any real heart or integrity. Then I sat through it hoping the plot would develop these "rats" into people I could possibly care about. The five main characters largely remained rodents right to the bitter end. So the characterizations lacked depth (primarily not the actors fault). This isn't a gritty story about hardship. It almost feels random, without real voice, what happens just happens. The title indicates this is a (lightweight) drama. It just didn't lift off the runway. Technically the camera work was a bit rough, and the subtitles were poor. Great or even just good festival/independent films can percolate in your head for days afterwards. This film left me as soon as I left the film.