Mubi Monday: Los Bastardos (2009)

An early film from Amat Escalante (director of The Untamed), co-written with Martin Escalante, Los Bastardos is the cinematic equivalent of a short, sharp shock the body. It’s a relatively quiet film, and doesn’t seem troubling or disturbing until things take a very sudden turn into a third act that is positioned in much more dangerous territory than anything else preceding it.

Jesus Moises Rodriguez and Rubén Sosa play Jesús and Fausto, two undocumented immigrants trying to work in the USA. They have financial obligations (we hear conversation about a loved one who needs help), but they also don’t want to devalue themselves, nor any of the other workers who wait at the same spot every day to pick up jobs. The capitalism machine keeps trying to cheapen lives, however, so it can constantly grind bodies down into the fuel it needs to keep running. Things turn troubling when Jesús and Fausto enter the home of Karen (Nina Zavarin).

There isn’t much to say about Los Bastardos, on the surface. It has a short runtime, a number of scenes feel as if nothing is really happening, and the Escalantesn refuse to offer a clear and clean explanation of everything. Character motivations are implied, but only when leads are asked questions that create a narrative they decide to go along with. Whether that narrative is true or not is a different matter entirely, although some viewers may watch this and happily accept everything onscreen as it is presented. Perhaps the ambiguity is something I added to the film, but I find the whole thing much more interesting when motives aren’t entirely clear.

The small cast do well in their roles, especially when having to act out some of the more uncomfortable moments, to put it mildly. Rodriguez and Sosa, both non-professional actors, feel completely natural and real for every minute of the movie. The decision to use non-professionals in those roles could have easily backfired, but it works brilliantly. Zavarin, on the other hand, has an acting career that spans over two decades, and she is the one performer required to show absolute vulnerability and helplessness, something she does admirably.

Without too much here, if anything, that feels cinematic, Los Bastardos is best approached as something akin to a filmed stage play. It would be just as easy to dismiss it entirely as it would be to read too much into it, and I tentatively recommend it to those who don’t mind something that provides more questions than answers. Perhaps, and I realise this may be a stretch, the focus of the film isn’t really the narrative. Perhaps it was created to challenge how viewers perceive immigrants, to show how humans who are treated as disposable and discardable may view the lives of others as having the same pitifully low value. 

Whatever you think of the film, you will think about it. That doesn’t guarantee that you will like it though.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Untamed (2016)

It's always odd, but also oddly satisfying, when a film featuring some very alien designs, and ideas, ends up making a lot of interesting points about humanity, our various relationships, and the nature of love. It happens on so many occasions, of course, with film-makers using the eyes of an outsider to coolly look on at the complex contradictions we carry around throughout our lives, but it's always a pleasant surprise.

The Untamed is another of those movies. It may not resonate in the same way as something like The Man Who Fell To Earth or Under The Skin, for example, but it certainly amounts to more than what it may seem to be at first glance, which is a film containing people who have sex with a tentacle-wriggling alien beastie.

Simone Bucio is Verónica, a young woman who . . . has sex with a tentacle-wriggling alien beastie. It lives in a barn. Verónica seems to enjoy visiting the barn. But things change when she is bitten, which means she has to go to hospital for some treatment. There she meets the handsome Fabián (Eden Villavicencio), and there may be the chance to start a relationship with someone who can have fulfil her without using tentacles. It's complicated though, because Fabián has been having a secret affair with Ángel (Jesús Meza), who is married to Alejandra (Ruth Ramos), who is Fabián's sister. You can see how things can develop from one messy situation to the next, while the alien in the barn just waits patiently for people to visit it when the urge takes them.

Directed by Amat Escalante, who also co-wrote the script with Gibrán Portela, this may seem like a bit of a departure for them when you look at previous films they have worked on, but it's actually not too far removed (especially for Portela, who wrote Juegoso Inocentes about a decade ago). The horror elements, and the sci-fi heart of things, all push snugly against very identifiable issues for the main characters. An unsatisfying marriage, people taking more risks as they try to find sexual pleasure, betrayal, and more. Take away the alien and you have something that could be a very familiar melodrama. Add it in there and you have something that's a little bit more interesting, and a lot darker.

All four of the leads are equally good, with Bucio dominating the proceedings in the first half, so intriguing as she seems intent on weaning herself away from one damaging relationship by getting herself mixed up in another that could prove damaging in a different way. Funnily enough, despite some of the plotting, this is a film that flips some cinematic gender stereotypes, with the female characters often more confident and sure in their own bodies than the male characters. That means that  Ramos becomes just as interesting to watch as Bucio, as narrative strands start to weave together, but also lends more weight to the performances of both Villavicencio and Meza than might otherwise have been the case.

More thought-provoking than you might think a film about a barn-dwelling squirmy alien that just wants to sex people up could be, this is well worth your time. As long as you're prepared to spend some time being bemused as the narrative writhes and wriggles as much as the glimpsed creature.

8/10

You can buy the movie here.