Post Tenebras Lux

After the dark, light.

This is the nearest translation of this highly tentative piece of cinema whose story involves Mexican urban life, a couple in a whorehouse, a British rugby match with a guest appearance of devil himself.

At the epicentre a man and his family. On the surface he has it all; a nice house, a beautiful wife and two healthy adorable kids. Beneath that, not all that shines is gold as he struggles with addiction and needs pornography to inspire spousal intimacy.

Unfortunately and despite the high dose of creative filming the above is the only cohesive bit in this film. The added layers that aspire to connect to the title by juxtaposition of moments of light and darkness drove the film onto a one way street with lights out.

A very mixed experience

Post Tenebras Lux (2012) is a Mexican film written and directed by Carlos Reygadas. It stars Adolfo Jiménez Castro as Juan, a sophisticated and wealthy man who lives with his wife Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) and children is a rural area of Mexico.

The movie contains bizarre elements. Many bizarre elements.

Bizarre elements are not necessarily out of place in a movie, but none of these elements made sense to me. I couldn't see how they fit into any cohesive directorial vision. For example, every so often the movie cuts to a scene of English schoolboys playing rugby. This must be highly symbolic. My question is, Symbolic of what?

At one point Juan watches while Natalia has sex with a stranger in a steam bath. Ms. Acevedo is very beautiful. (In fact, an older woman who is facilitating the event keeps telling her how beautiful she is.) So, the scene has its merits in the visual sense. However, in terms of plot, the scene makes no sense, especially because at that point everyone is speaking French. (There is one really positive aspect to this part of the movie. It allows the reviewer to point out that this was a truly steamy sex scene.)

Director Reygadas won the Best Director Award at Cannes for this movie. The jury must still be laughing.

All the reviewers that superficially reacted to this film as just another self-indulgent art house ego trip made me laugh. I despise and ridicule art house pretension as much as anyone. But that's not what this film is. I'm not going to bother adding my insights and interpretations to the heap, you can do that on your own. And that's the point, if you can have a mind to make your own connections and formulate your own ideas, you should have no problems with PTL. Rich photography with shots that linger long enough to actually absorb them. A refreshing lack of the usual gimmicks: moving close-ups, romantic schmaltz and tearful, blubbering melodrama. The story is self-contained and original; the characters genuine and authentic; the style minimalist yet mesmerizing. Attributes sorely lacking in Hollywood and contemporary cinema in general. And Natalia's rendition of 'it's a dream' near the end was moving and impactful. Unlike anything that whining, glass shattering ol' hack Neil Young ever did. Not going to say it's perfect, but we need more like this.

Post Tenebras Lux and TO THE WONDER were my favorite films at Toronto's Festival in 2012. The plot description you get here on IMDb is as good as I could do so I won't bother with that. This film is like a cross between Malick and Lynch. It's beautiful, dark, bizarre and dreamy... and non-linear to add to the cryptic puzzle. Like Malick, the beautiful shots are about enough to hook you in... assuming you know how to experience a movie, not just watch what a studio spoon feeds you. Like Lynch, the dark underbelly of humanity is lurking beneath in a surreal fashion. Subconscious here we come! My favorite place to be! By the way, Reygadas won Best Director at Cannes for this. Now I hope I've added to the mystery, and didn't solve any of it!

It'd be fairly easy to fall prey to the impeccability and preciousness of the imagery here presented. This was projected at Cannes after all.

The main objective of the filmmaker seems to be to show a very rigid set of moralities, interpretation which he disowns, he blames any interpretation to the spectator. As if the kuleshov effect didn't exist and juxtaposition of images wasn't a well studied science.

For example, he presents a group of educated white people talking about ideas and auteurs, against a group of non-white uneducated people just getting wasted and exposed; this is a great moment to remember that there wasn't a single professional actor in this film.

There's for me an overall feeling of misery impregnating all aspects of this production, first the misery of white empty people showing off for an speck of intellectual appreciation, then the misery of people living in poverty and being filmed to make a tall tale about the inherent savageness of the human race and it's direct correlation to the privilege one has. But the most miserable man is not the filmmaker who in its own account would deserve a hat, and even maybe a chair. No, the most miserable person in this transaction is the spectator. Especially the one who was taken on a date with someone who had already watched the film. This spectator that slowly descended into the realisation that his date was an insufferable and pseudointellectual snob who pretended to enjoy such demonstrations of misery in cinema, and actually considered that it has an honest element of artistry. Someone who he thought highly of, just getting crushed under the desperate attempt of Reygadas to make something remotely trascendental, just to be blocked on every social media platform after that. Very inconvenient and uncomfortable situation due to them already living together. Poor, poor soul.

This is my opinion, the movie is garbage. No one can like this movie genuinely, this is no one's favourite movie. Anyone who says to like this either is Reygadas family or is pretending and will flip at the slightest sign of pressure. I will die on this hill.

In fact, I challenge anyone who is willing to defend this film to a fight-to-death.

I'll be in the fountain at London Square every Friday at 3pm.

Edit: As to april 2022 no one has shown. This is only further proving my point. This is no one's favourite movie, no one would even take a punch for this movie, hell, they wouldn't even take a chance.