Gueros

This starts with the story of Tomas who is sent to stay with his older brother in Mexico City after a water filled balloon incident goes awry. On arrival he finds his bro, Sombra living with his friend Santos in a flat where they steal electricity from a neighbour and are on strike from being on strike at the local University.

Essentially what follows are scenes that are linked together by dint of the fact they are linked together. The subtle stories and plots are full of satire and swipes at society but without ever unpacking what that means. It is filmed in black and white in a narrow ratio aspect so at once looks out of place in line with the characters themselves. It is also art house but without trying to be – there is even a breaking of the fourth wall in places – which took me by surprise and that is what this film is about – surprising you by the ordinary. Part love story, part coming of age, part road trip and part search for a lost rock genius, this is a film that refuses to be type cast and is better for it.

The actors all play this straight in that it just looks unrehearsed and they are adlibbing but you know that is far from the truth. This will not be to everybody's taste – if you like a start a middle and an end then probably best to avoid this but if you like to see things differently and are prepared for a journey that is as aimless as it is vital then you are probably going to really enjoy this really charming Mexican film.

A hip coming of age road movie is the first feature from gifted Mexican writer- director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Shot in academy ratio and black and white and marked by a fresh use of camera, editing, sound, and humor and a breaking the fourth wall that owes something to the Nouvelle Vague, it focuses on Tomás, a slim, pale teenage bad boy ("güero" is Mexican slang for light-skinned) whose mother can't cope with him, so sends him from Veracruz to live in Mexico City for a while with his older brother "Sombra" ("dark-skinned"). Sombra is a student at the national university, but it's disrupted by a huge strike (loosely based on the 11-month strike of 1999), and he's "on strike from the strike," sitting idly in his trashy concrete apartment, a depressed slacker trying to teach himself card tricks. They get out, with his roommate and best friend Santos and girlfriend Ana (a strike leader), on a mission to find a cult Mexican rock idol of the Sixties called Epigmenio Cruz admired by their late father and both brothers, reportedly dying of cirrhosis of the liver, to pay him homage. It's said that Cruz once "made Bob Dylan cry." Ruizpalacios has acknowledged a debt to Truffaut, Godard, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Fellini, but his light touch, wit, and grasp of earthy Spanish vernacular (though he studied in London and speaks perfect English too) also link Güeros with Latin American youth films like Alex dos Santos' 2006 Glue, Che Sandoval's You Think You're the Prettiest, But You Are the Sluttiestt (2009), and the work of Fernando Eimbcke and Gerardo Naranjo. This won prizes at Berlin and Tribeca and had a limited US release May 2015 (see A.O. Scott's enthusiastic and detailed description in the NYTimes). Now out on DVD from Kino Larber. Watched on a DVD provided by Rodrigo Brandão (Indie Strategy) 2 Jan. 2015.

...the grail may not be so important.

Set in 1999 amidst the university strike in Mexico, the film eschews the political (mostly) for the personal. The film moves with a pace that is both unpredictable, but in hindsight guided by some hand of fate. There are wonderful mirroring of events (seals, tigers and bricks/balloons), and the use of extreme sound/imaging borders on an ASMR trigger.

Memorable characters, humor and violence battle for your attention, and even if I only got the reheated meal via translation, this was maybe the most enjoyable Friday night film of the whole damn pandemic.

Two shorts and an interview accompanied the DVD I rented. Well worth watching, and not just for the sake of seeing Tenoch Huerta's acting chops. I was watching some of the deleted scenes included as well but I really did not want to alter the experience I had just completed.

One really unrelated tip, while I heard Ruizpalacios mention Truffaut, Jarmusch and Wender...not so long ago I watched the excellent multi-part documentary "Rompan Todo" which helped to set up the quest in a way.

That said, the film stands (strongly) by itself. Look forward to more from the film palace of Ruizpalacios!

Set in 1999 against a backdrop of student protests, Güeros is a road movie that becomes a voyage of discovery for three rootless young people seeking to bridge the gap between aimlessness and social purpose. The debut feature film by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios received twelve nominations at the 57th Ariel Awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars, winning five of them including Best Film, Best Director, Best First Film, Best Sound, and Best Cinematography (Damian Garcia). Shot in black-and-white, the film is evocative of the French New Wave, balancing highly structured sequences with segments of spontaneous and playful improvisation.

In the film, Tomas (Sebastian Aguirre), a disruptive pre-teen in Veracruz is sent by his overburdened mom to Mexico City to live with his brother Federico (Tenoch Huerta), a slacker college student known as Sombra because of his dark skin. Tomas is called a "güeros" because of his lighter complexion underscoring an element of racial conflict in Mexican society. Living with his similarly uninvolved roommate, Santos (Leonardo Ortizgris) in an apartment complex in Copilco that looks as if it's next on the waiting list for demolition, Sombra's position on the student strike is firmly in the middle, saying that he is "on strike against the strike." His daily activity consists of …well, nothing much. He and Santos sit around watching TV by borrowing an electrical cord from a little girl downstairs, an action that does not sit too well with the girl's father.

Bored, Tomas decides that a little adventure never hurt anyone and comes up with a plan to find Epigmiento Cruz in order to have him sign their well-worn cassette tape. An enigmatic folk singer from the sixties who their father loved, Cruz is a symbol of something bigger than them,a larger than life hero who can make them see what's behind things. As Sombra says, "If you can see behind things, the only thing they can't take away from you is that feeling."

Though the singer is rumored to be sick or dying, little güerito tells Fede that Cruz "once made Bob Dylan cry," presumably an accomplishment worthy of a place in the hall of fame. The trip, according to Ruizpalacios, was inspired by Bob Dylan's journey to visit an ailing Woody Guthrie in the hospital during the late 50s. Shrugging off a panic attack which is carefully explained to him at the hospital, Sombra visits the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) where students are on strike to show their disagreement with the administration's decision to instate an enrollment fee even though the University had always been free.

Sombra, Santos, and Tomas walk into an auditorium overflowing with protesters listening to Sombra's former girlfriend Ana (Ilse Salas) speaking in front of the room. The scene is filled with shouting and confrontation, a chaotic depiction not to the liking of some former protesters who complained about the unserious tone of the segment. As Ana joins the trio to look for Cruz, their quest leads them to a pool party where well-to-do intellectuals muse about the sorry state of Mexican cinema.

Here the film engages in a sort of self-parody as one director complains that all Mexican movies deliver a picture of impoverished beggars to satisfy Western audiences at film festivals. Sombra also chimes in, saying that Mexicans are often portrayed as cheaters, atheists, prostitutes and alcoholics. Güeros ultimately takes many detours and shifts of perspective but, though it is episodic in structure, never loses its footing as the search for the legendary Epigmiento allows the seekers to move from a place of apathy to one of self-acceptance and commitment.

Ruizpalacios describes the film's central theme as "the change from being static to being in movement. Healing through movement." However you interpret Güeros' message, the film has an invigorating appeal: fresh, playful, and meaningful, even suggesting at one point that the seeming randomness of life is guided by divine purpose. Sombra says at one point that "If the world is a train station and the people are the passengers, those who stay at the station and watch the trains go by are the poets, the ones who come and won't go." Tomas is one who watches the trains depart, seeing as we all have once with the innocent eyes of discovery as the city unfolds before his eyes with all its massive contradictions, encompassing the best and worst of humanity.

This film stands out among the majority of contemporary Mexican films, this film is very interpretive and it may be that you do not understand what it means at first, but analyzing it in depth you can see an effort to do something of quality. Although the main story is not very attractive, the situations that the characters go through become a message and a portrait of the reality of Mexico City. I don't want to go deeper because I think that everyone should have their point of view on what is portrayed in this film.

On the technical side, the performances are very good, the photography is good, the production design is good, the direction is very good, in general it is a different film from the rest, deep and realistic.