Daniel & Ana

The title characters are teen-aged brother and sister who are kidnapped and forced to perform such unspeakable acts that their relationship is shattered forever. It's interesting to see how each reacts to the tragedy. The slow pacing is frustrating, given that dialog is sparse and there are endless scenes of characters doing nothing but staring into space. As Daniel, Bernal gives a one-note performance. He barely speaks five lines throughout the movie, making it hard to understand what he's going through or to sympathize with him. Vega fares better as his sister, an outgoing young woman whose spirit is severely deflated by the attack.

A brother and sister fall victim to an express kidnapping, during which they are hideously violated. (Although several reviews specify what happens, I think it's better not to give it away. Suffice to say the kidnappers borrow a page from the Japanese army's Nanking handbook.) The film follows the aftermath of this abuse, showing how the siblings' character and behaviour are altered. Except for a surprising reprise of the horror, there are few actual events in the balance of the film. Much of what we see on screen is the protagonists acting surly and withdrawn, avoiding people or giving monosyllabic responses. (The clueless parents see both their children begin to behave out of character at the same time but never seem to consider that there might be a common cause.) I believe it would take truly superior actors to infuse this script with the drama befitting the characters' experience and in my opinion, Bernal and Vega are not up to it. This may be a minority opinion, since other viewers have found their performances compelling. Of course, the script doesn't give them a whole lot to work with and bears the lion's share of the responsibility for the tedium of the siblings' goings-on. However, the kidnapping scene could, by all rights, have showcased first class dramatic skills and the leaden acting we see there tells us the actors have a long way to go. (The leads do shine by comparison to their captors, though. It is hard to watch the kidnapper give his spiel and not think of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil." Considering the capabilities of these actors, I believe making that scene so detailed showed poor judgment.) One thing worth highlighting is that this film is closer to a vignette than a structured narrative. Despite some indications to the contrary, I believe there is no culminating climax or resolution--it is pretty flat after the kidnapping. The film is supposedly based on a true story and may hew very close to real life, which, of course, is seldom a structured narrative. That may be some viewers' cup of tea; if it isn't yours, think twice about seeing this film. In short, there is a disparity between the film's subject matter and the execution. The premise is not for the faint of heart but its enormous dramatic potential is dissipated in flat, repetitive scenes.

The story is good. The fact that it is condemning a real problem makes it even better. For a while, I thought it was going to be a powerful film, but it was not. You will find yourself counting the minutes for the movie to end. The preamble to the peak moment is boring, then less than 20 minutes of a good sequence, perfectible, but good enough, considering the roughness of the situation. That's it. The rest is dull, repetitive, and flat. The plot offered plenty to work with. The story is claimed to be real, thus there were many other things they could have shown, expressed, and exposed to move the audience. However, all the opportunities were wasted with a weak and God-fearing approach to the post-traumatic behavior. They lost it. Toward the end, another dramatic moment is featured as an irrelevant inconvenience solved with Ana giving the cold shoulder to her brother. They took the easy way to solve the conflict. It is fair to say that the photography is flawless. Marimar Vega's performance is the best of the film.

Maybe I'm so disappointed cause everyone sells Michel Franco as one of the best directors of his time. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a bad movie, that's it, the story could've been read from the local newspaper, no need to make a movie just to watch an actress without clothes, it seems that Michel Franco directed this movie only to feed his morbid curiosity of doing a pornographic movie. Bad acting + bad photography = bad director. In the first. The first scenes are super tedious, showing a unrealistic boring life. Mexico City offers much more than what they portray, there's no caos in that city. The incongruous and unreal scenarios, playing with the theory of how people from organized crime use you is near stupidity, it's like filming criminal theories that we would like to happen, but the harsh reality is not like that, reality surpasses fiction, and if you are not willing to project the harsh reality it is better not to announce the story as a real fact. People who have been victims of crimes of this type must be very angry to see this, no one has been as lucky as these characters, this story is unreal, you can ask any kidnapping victim.

May be based on true events but as usual Michael Franco gives you disturbing work. Whoa! Guess everyone has their preferred genre.