Crónica de un desayuno

The kind of movie that demands too much from the audience, yet to disappoint most of them. I think of the Mexican people who (either in an attempt to support Mexican movies or willing to see a film casting top Mexican stars) saw it, half of the people went out of the theater when I went to watch it, it's definitely not the kind of movie one could expect. I think too of the people from other countries who dared spending 2 hours seeing it till the very end, "what a piece of crap". In order to understand Cronica de un desayuno, one has to be mexican, and one has to be familiar with the low middle classes (or even better, be part of them). There's nothing accidental in this movie, the family is and has what many families, in Mexico at least, share. One has to see it with a wide open mind to accept it entirely, it's not the kind of movie that you fully understand after you watch it. The older brother wouldn't let anyone sit on his RED couch, the sister is staying no matter how she wants to leave, the younger brother is going to an excursion, and all he cares about is the yellow radio, the mother has to prepare the breakfast for the family, no matter how tense and unbearable the situation is. The father came back after who knows how long, allowing the mother to live a night of passion that somehow turns out to be momentary, and ends up by repeating all the attitudes of his sons... The stories around the house are surrealistic (and so is the movie), a travestite looking for his penis, a factory worker and his attempt of suicide, subtled by the kisses of his girlfriend, a fat man riding his bicycle after a interesting conversation about homosexuals with his sister? wife? mother?... The music doesn't pretend too much but it achieves a lot, not more than a snare drum, cymbal, a some strings. Thanks good a movie like this was done and released.

One of the best mexican movies ever!, and one of the less understood, even by mexican themselves, no matter how identified the should have felt with it.

Some people prefer to see blue walls and some others red ones. Some people choose to see the truth, some prefer to be blind folded because the truth hurts. This is a film made with balls. You need them to break conventional modes of film making. If you consider most of Hollywood film are worth two hours of your time, then this film should not be in your plans. Is a brain and heart teaser film. Is a film about Mexicans and its painful as well as reliever. This is film revolution. This is real. Keep making films like this! Keep upsetting people, they need it. Bravo!!

Cronica de un desayuno combines the worst defects of mexican cinema, a rare feat nowadays.

It's pretentious: it wants us to believe that it is deep, only because some scene is out-of-focus, another is pseudo-surreal, yet another plays with the Eisenstein-Infante-Caifanes tradition of laughing-crying faces, the edition is fragmented, and it is all so solemn.

It has a weak script: the main story hardly develops, so it has other three smaller, needless stories, stuck into it. They are only good to make the film last longer.

Most of the acting is bad. A true feat, baring in mind that many of the best known mexican actors were cast.

There is an abuse of unnecesary foul language. To the point that the character of Paloma, who symbolizes the dreams of freedom of a child, uses it throughly.

It is homophobic. The character played by Eduardo Palomo is the sorriest, and most punished, representation of a transexual I have ever seen.

It is very boring. I ended up envying the people that left the theater before the end of the film.

Whatever it tries, it has been done better, in Mexico and elsewhere.

In other words: "Para partirte la madre, nada como una mala película"

Yes. Watch this movie if you like brave films. This is maybe the best Mexican picture since Midaq Alley just because the excellent cast, the outrageous direction and a sublime soundtrack. Many people did not like 'Cronica…', they think it's very aggressive but they didn't understand that it was just a representation with hyper realism of the Mexican society but so similar to all the third world families. I hope that Benjamin Cann and Bruno Bichir (who in this movie gives another example of his greatness as an actor) soon get together again with a new film. Just Remember how Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel) was misunderstood when released, but now we consider one of the best movies of all times. Please, prepare yourself and watch this film.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but "Cronica para un desayuno" could be one of the most gretatest films in tne mexican movie history for a lot of reasons. We can get a lot of ingredients for a perfect mexican middle-class family breakfast: a cup of Buñuel's surrealistic motifs with a little drop of Ripstenian desolated scenarios; a pound of phallus symbols around the film and a difficult psychological complexity, more than Todd Solondz's Happiness and the Dogma movement films. There`s a lot of sordidness, black humor, repressed dreams (Teodoro's dream of fly), incestual lack of control (the relation between Marcos and Luzma), no-sense parallel stories, a discrete violence, anachronisms and

a little sign of hope (spotlighted in Luzma, the husband's home return and "Un poco Mas" used for leit-motif). Marcos (Bruno Bichir) is a charming character ( I think in a Bukoskian way), the king-without a-crown who don't expects for anything, but broken noses. Luzma (Maria Rojo) , the lovable wife , put out a lot of faces, but the only thing that she worried is that her sons had breakfast; she' s a loser in many ways and sensual in few moments , but you will fall in love of her. The soundtrack's drag (too much woods) feeds the lack of technical merits, intentional , of course: out-of-focus shots, overlighted close-ups (in introspective scenes), dizzy pans and sudden edition cuts. "Crónica" is something difficult to digest, it get stuck in the throat and anything helps for it. It tastes bitter, like a rotten orange juice and sour like expired milk, but you want to enjoy it. So I recommend to get some Melox before the show, because you won't get hungry after all.