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 Entertainment | October 2005 
Mexican Movie Overload
 Wire services
| | Gael Garcia Bernal in The King. |
Rejection, religion and revenge make a powerful combination when Mexican-American Elvis Valderez arrives in town looking for the father he never knew at the start of The King.
In his first major English-language screen role, Bernal (working with British director James Marsh) brings a plausibility to a complex role.
But his father (William Hurt) has moved on and doesn't want a relationship.
Now a 'born again' Pastor at the local Baptist church, he can't - or won't - face the results of his actions twenty-one years previously.
Rather than embrace his firstborn, his reaction is to warn him off - and to stay away from his half brother and sister, the children from the Pastor's marriage to Laura Harring's perceptive mother.
But while Elvis - who has just been honorably discharged form the US Navy - may have been the very model of a modern sailor (he still practises his drill alone in his motel room and shows a frighteningly impressive ability to 'tidy up'), he nevertheless pursues an ungentlemanly, incestuous relationship with his sister who has no idea that the newcomer is already so closely linked to her.
Garcia Bernal is a study in how good intentions can metamorphose into something altogether much more disturbing.
As he becomes gradually more involved with Malerie (Pell James) it is hard not to think 'surely this has to stop somewhere?' but the chain of events sparked by one man's decision has been set in motion.
Meanwhile, Mexican writer/director Carlos Reygadas' new film Batalla En El Cielo (Battle in Heaven) opens this week...and it isn't for the faint hearted.
Set in the same contemporary Mexico City as Amores Perros, Reygadas uses novice actors to tell the story of Carlos, a driver for a high-ranking military officer, and his wife who kidnap a baby from a neighbour.
The child dies and Carlos confesses to his boss' daughter (played by Anapola Mushkadiz) who works as a prostitute from a discreet 'boutique' in one of Mexico City's most expensive neighbourhoods.
Reygadas' film is a visceral portrayal of a man in crisis. As we see the city around him through his eyes - Reygadas' huge, lingering panoramas take in all the rooftops and scenes that busy city-dwellers ignore or take for granted - we see the painfully slow internal collapse of a man whose motives remain unclear.
The graphic sex scenes at the start of the film may disturb many people - it caused even more of a stir when Reygadas cut them when the film was shown at the Morelia International Film Festival recently "just to piss people off", he told Mexicanwave - but the brutally harsh realities of life in the megalopolis - at least as Reygadas sees it - linger long after the credits roll.
And finally...
Amat Escalante may not be quite so well known as Reygadas but Escalante, who worked as Reygadas' assistant director on Battalla En El Cielo is hoping that his own feature, Sangre, will also go down well with Mexican film fans.
Sangre, the story of an ordinary man with a sexually demanding wife, will also show at the London Film Festival. |
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