Director flashes genius in shocking new movie

  • By Robert Horton / Herald Movie Critic
  • Thursday, March 23, 2006 9:00pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

Two Mexican films open today, which is a testament to the exciting things happening in that national cinema in the wake of the international hits “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Amores Perros.” One is “Duck Season,” the other “Battle in Heaven.”

Unsettling: A shocker from director Carlos Reygadas (who made the amazing “Japon”), about a Mexico City chauffeur whose life unravels in a botched kidnapping attempt and a sexual liaison with the boss’s daughter. The explicit sex and drifting sense of story don’t always cohere, but Reygadas pulls off some remarkable sequences. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)

Rated: Not rated; probably NC-17 for nudity, violence

Now showing: Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., Seattle; 206-523-3935

Please, I implore you, do not confuse one film for the other. Anyone expecting to see the adolescent whimsy of “Duck Season” but accidentally walking into “Battle in Heaven” will get the jolt of his life.

And right away, too, because this movie begins with an explicit sex scene that isn’t the least bit sexy. Blunt and without any semblance of joy, it sets the tone for a film that doesn’t compromise.

The male in the scene is Marcos (Marcos Hernandez), a fat, middle-age man and chauffeur for an upper-class Mexico City family. (The opening-sequence sex appears to be a fantasy.) Before the film begins, Marcos and his wife (Bertha Ruiz) have kidnapped a child, in a botched attempt at a ransom plot.

But director Carlos Reygadas is not interested in this story. There is no conventional story line in “Battle in Heaven,” and the title might refer to the battle going on in Marcos’ mind as he stumbles from one direction to the next.

The girl (Anapola Muschkadiz) from the opening sequence is real; she’s Ana, the daughter of Marcos’ politically connected boss, and she’s known Marcos for years. While enjoying the fruits of wealth, she also spends time as a hooker in a brothel, evidently as an act of class rebellion.

From her flirtatious manner and from Marcos’ dull longing, we suspect that Ana and Marcos will eventually have sex. And indeed this spectacle becomes part of the film, as does Marcos’ bedding his dumpy wife.

As in his brilliant debut film, “Japon,” director Reygadas is insistent about showing naked people in sexual situations who do not look like the naked people we customarily see in movies. More shocking than the sex is the vision of homely people in sexual terms. The actors, by the way, are not professional actors.

The movie isn’t all about sex, and Reygadas, with one exception, is up to more interesting work when we aren’t distracted by the coupling. The way he shoots the ebb-and-flow of a subway tunnel, for instance, or the camera’s breathtaking arc around a city courtyard – which briefly opens up a whole outside world for the trapped characters – is the stuff of genius.

A climactic incident (not of the sexual variety) struck me as a cliche, as though Reygadas had painted himself into a corner and needed a shocker to fit the political context. This hard-to-watch movie is not as coherent or lyrical as the amazing “Japon,” but this director is a potential great one.

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