Ashes movie review: Diego Luna’s intimate immigrant character study is well-intentioned but disjointed

Diego Luna got his feet wet as a director with his promising 2011 debut, Abela slight but disarming tragicomedy that took imaginative takes on patriarchy and Mexican masculinity. It followed in 2014 on a larger scale Cesar Chaveza pedestrian biodrama that lost any shelf life it might have had when evidence emerged accusing the famous labor unionist of sexual assault, grooming, and rape earlier this year, all of which further obscured his legacy. Next came 2016 Mr. Piga pig farm road trip movie with Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph that I absolutely refuse to believe exists.

Unfortunately, Luna’s fourth inactive feature behind the camera, ash (Ceniza en la Boca), is unlikely to correct this faltering path. Based on the highly regarded novel by Brenda Navarro, it is a character study so vague, abstract, and elliptical that it lacks the connective tissue that connects us to its story or provides emotional access to its characters. The film seems to want to serve as a mood piece — perhaps something closer to Bing Liu’s narrative debut Prepare for the next life from last year – but there’s so little verve on screen that you start to wonder, “Isn’t being a good actor enough?”

Interspersed with blurry white spots to signify a change of location, the film’s time frame is often blurry and its setting unclear. Many audiences will spend a third of the running time trying to figure out the characters’ relationships.

The film begins with Lucila (Ana Diaz, the only reason to keep watching) being woken up by her mother Isabel (Adriana Paz, from the film). Emilia Perez), who orders her to take care of her little brother before he disappears in Spain. Later, Lucila follows Isabel from Mexico City to Madrid, accompanied by her brother Diego (Sergio Bautista).

Forced to support the family, Lucila finds work as a nanny, looking after the infant of a rude and domineering architect (Irene Escolar), while also taking charge of her increasingly difficult brother Diego (Sergio Bautista), who risks being expelled from school if he continues to beat up his classmates.

Impulsively, Lucila follows her friend Jimena (Laura Gómez) to Barcelona in pursuit of independence. She gets an English musician boyfriend (Charlie Rowe), while hiding the fact that she is doing nursing home work and delivering food from him. Feeling left behind by their neglectful mother and abandoned by his older sister, Diego shows up in Barcelona, ​​but after a falling out, tells Lucilla that for all her criticism of Isabel, she has become just like her.

Things deteriorate for Lucilla when she is unable to pay the rent and is evicted from their shared apartment, but her world comes crashing down when she receives a call informing her of a tragic death in the family. Ignoring her grief-stricken mother’s advice, Lucilla decides to return to Mexico City to mourn with her grandparents (Luisa Huertas and Guillermo Ríos) and other relatives, and sneaks her deceased loved one’s ashes into her backpack.

These are some of the most poignant scenes in the film, as Lucilla feels perhaps more like part of a family than she has in years. Despite a mentality shaped by military service, her abuela is gentle and affectionate, while her straight-shooting abuela gives her the explanation she has long denied due to her mother’s abandonment, without sugar-coating it.

This concluding extension also explains—more literally than emotionally—the original title of Navarro’s novel, Ash in the mouth. But the impression throughout is of a complex work of fiction drawn from the machinations of a broad plot, to the exclusion of meaningful insight into character. It’s a film that manages to be both intimate and uninvolving, though that’s not the fault of the highly competent actors. It may have been cut in the edit in an attempt to move the story forward, but inadvertently deleted.

The screenplay barely touches on some of what might seem like important themes, or at least vital background textures in the book. The stigmatization of Mexican immigrants, whom the Spaniards treat as culturally and class inferior, is limited to the rude contempt of a nightmare employer, or Lucilla on the street in Barcelona contemplating a flyer for an intensive course in the Catalan language.

The crime and socioeconomic factors that drive Mexicans to seek opportunities abroad are only made clear in a chaotic night scene in which a self-proclaimed gang graffitied as “The New School” terrorizes the peaceful neighborhood where Lucilla’s grandparents live. We are left to assume that this is a drug cartel making its dangerous presence felt.

Ultimately, the most effective moments are those in which we observe Lucilla showing genuine affection for the people in her care – tossing and turning on the bed and laughing with a happy child or tenderly bathing a neglected grandmother of a Spanish family. But the film lacks fluidity. Its heavily fragmented approach ultimately leaves us with pieces that don’t add up to much.