From ecocide to social networks or, how could it be otherwise in a film of Amat Escalante, the radical class differences of present-day Mexico. All that (and more) fits in ‘Lost in the night’the return of the charro filmmaker to the feature film after seven years absent after having signed that magnificent erotic sci-fi vision entitled ‘La región salvaje’ (2016).
There was expectation to know if Escalante would continue this type of concern, but unfortunately, ‘Lost at night’ does not bring us back to the filmmaker of dreamlike litanies of that feature film, because his new work is supported by some ideas and resources from ‘Blood ‘ or ‘Heli’ but with a lower tone and with a view to a wider audience. we are before a social thriller in quality which, if it seems to lose narrative power, offers us, for its part, an Ester Expósito practicing an intermittent Mexican accent that, to this pen, has seemed solid and convincing.
Desire and death, as was the case, however, in ‘The Wild Region’ also thread together the new Escalante film. ‘Lost at night’ is the story of Emiliano (Juan Daniel García), the son of a disappeared activist, and his relationship with a family of gringo artists and with actions in the local mining exploitation, whom he suspects, and whose Eldest daughter, Mónica (Expósito), is an influencer with suicidal tendencies.
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Mexico, once again a space devastated by death
A quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s ‘A Ridiculous Man’s Dream’ lifts the curtain on ‘Lost in the Night’ to allow the camera to explore a luxurious, modern mansion on a lake that is empty. Later we will find out that the Aldama family lived there, but before that happens, Escalante cuts the sequence and takes us back in time, when several residents of a town discuss a devilish dilemma: support the construction of a mining operation or protect their land. .
In a few minutes, the activist Mrs. Paloma will go from publicly defending her opposition to the project to being beaten by a couple of police officers who end up putting her inside their vehicle to make her disappear forever and ever. The entire scene of the kidnapping, captured from a ghostly night that ends up turning blood red, is shocking and brings Escalante back to his early works..
When we return to the present three years after those events, we follow the true protagonist of the film in his investigation to find his mother and those responsible for her disappearance. The investigations will lead him to the Aldama family, artists, performers and addicted to screens, to attention and, especially, to money.
Monica, for example, broadcasts live from her channel streaming his various suicide attempts, accumulating thousands of views. Emiliano’s mission in ‘Lost in the Night’ is undoubtedly predestined to revive sins from the past and their respective dead.
‘Lost in the night’: gestures of tenderness, falls into the abyss
Despite the fact that ‘Lost in the Night’ limits the violence to two or three specific sequences, it does contain the Escalante capable of registering beautiful and tender gestures of affection and remarkable visual rhymes. The Mexican has not lost his ability to touch us with, for example, the image of two young men masturbating each other, nor his interest in offering stories that delve into the dark side of capitalismsymbolized here in two images of falls into the abyss that literally freeze the blood
Now, for more than a few moments the suspense plot of ‘Lost at night’ becomes too self-absorbed without delving into the aspects it proposes. There is desire and there is death, but Escalante is not capable here of taking full advantage of the ideas that he is propping up.. There is a subplot about drug traffickers, but it is soon watered down until it looks like just a pretext.
There are the secondary ones of the religious sect, also wasted. Finally, the turn taken by the character played by Maria Fernanda Osio is not understood either. Similarly, photography Adrian Durazo (‘Our time’) evokes perhaps too much the imprint of Emmanuel Lubezki, style brand of the new Mexican cinema represented by Carlos Reygadas, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and others; and, although the set does not stand out, it is at least a compact work rooted in the Mexican reality.
Something in need of the fury that Escalante had accustomed us to, but, in any case, a thriller in which the filmmaker seems to be going against himself, while being brighter and more hopeful.
In Espinof |