Review by JeromeH
By: JeromeH
Reviewer SteveBL is absolutely correct. There is no "LGBT interest" (unless you believe that any shy boy is homosexual). In terms of "Homophobia", that only occurs in the scene where two schoolboys are scuffling and using the word "faggot" while tr...
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Reviewer SteveBL is absolutely correct. There is no "LGBT interest" (unless you believe that any shy boy is homosexual). In terms of "Homophobia", that only occurs in the scene where two schoolboys are scuffling and using the word "faggot" while trying to establish who is the leader. The review by Amos Larsen contains a sentence that summarizes what this movie is all about. The sentence is "...allegory of Andrade's native country that "condemns and seeks to protect itself from foreign hate and cruelty without recognizing the malevolence within its own community." All in all: Don't waste your money.
Review by SteveBL
By: SteveBL
Gay viewers expecting a Mexican version of, say, L.I.E. must remain unsatisfied. While there are hints that the tween protagonist might be gay, and there is plenty of shirtlessness on the part of the gardener, this is not a coming-of-age sexuality st...
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Gay viewers expecting a Mexican version of, say, L.I.E. must remain unsatisfied. While there are hints that the tween protagonist might be gay, and there is plenty of shirtlessness on the part of the gardener, this is not a coming-of-age sexuality story. Really it's a film about family dynamics and the cruelty that can bind them. So, don't be deceived by TLA.
Review by Amos Lassen
By: Amos Lassen
"SEEDS" ("Cuernavaca")
Young and Misunderstood
Amos Lassen
"Cuernavaca" explores the stunted childhood of a young, misunderstood boy with surrealist approach to storytelling. Alejandro Andrade's directorial debut uses a variety of old-...
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"SEEDS" ("Cuernavaca")
Young and Misunderstood
Amos Lassen
"Cuernavaca" explores the stunted childhood of a young, misunderstood boy with surrealist approach to storytelling. Alejandro Andrade's directorial debut uses a variety of old-age visual concepts in a soft, easeful manner. The film creates a dreamlike universe for its characters that is filled with color and mystery with scenes of static beauty and changing cinematography.
Andy (Emilio Puente) is a young boy who witnesses his own mother get shot during a robbery. Now without a father figure in his life and filled with grief, he is to move in with his hard-nosed grandmother, Carmen (Carmen Maura) who lives in an extravagant villa surrounded by gardens and walls. During his stay in Cuernavaca, Andy is often overwhelmed by a series of nightmares, some of which repeatedly depict his mother's tragic demise. Although his father, Andrés (Moises Arizmendi) has been mostly absent from his life, he briefly comes back to his son. Andy soon becomes the caregiver for the adults in his life, as his cold, indifferent father struggles to stay afloat and his grandmother turns deals with alcoholism with abandonment issues. However, when Andy meets the gardener, a new world opens for him but it is not enough to help him cope with his beloved mother's death.
We get glimpses into each stage of Andy's development, from being naïve and needing acceptance to suppressing his emotions in order to adapt and take up the role of the caregiver. Using dreams and surreal imagery as a narrative form, the film takes us to another dimension, one that is intangible and unthinkable hidden within our reality.
"Cuernavaca" does not revolve around a rigid plotline. It strings together a series of events that are interspersed with cinematic dream sequences. There is not much emphasis placed on the story's development, but rather on its content, its essence and the means through which this essence is shown to the viewer. Director Andrade blurs the boundaries between imagination and reality by immersing elements of the dream world into the narrative of the film. This prevents the viewer from imposing their own chronology on the storyline's events and allows the focus to be more subtle, mental and emotional with "happenings" that define the characters' inner experiences.
Andrade has said that this film is based on his childhood memories. His grandmother had a mansion in the tropical city encircled by huge walls to keep the outside world away from their safe haven. Despite being isolated from external "evil", the director confesses that his grandparent struggled with anguish and anger and that was she was still deeply suffering. This serves as an allegory of Andrade's native country that "condemns and seeks to protect itself from foreign hate and cruelty without recognizing the malevolence within its own community." Andrade gives us Mexican society from a refreshingly different, self-reflective and detached perspective.
The day before his mother is killed, Andy has an argument with his mother about the cape his dad gave him. She thinks he's too old for dressing up, but it makes him feel stronger. At school the next day, listening to other kids shouting homophobic insults in the playground, he stands against a wall. As a result, his mother realizes she's made a mistake, and she takes him to the shops to buy a new one. But before he can even put it on, bad guys charge into the café where they're eating, and shoot her.
Andy is left without an adult to take care of him and he is traumatized, confused and angry. He's driven far from the familiar surroundings of Mexico City, taken to a remote house in Cuernavaca. It's his dad's place but his dad isn't there. His grandmother explains that Andy's father travels a lot. The way she says this makes Andy suspicious but he does his best to cope, He becomes friendly with his aunt Dhaly (Dulce Dominguez), who has Down syndrome and a shed full of kittens, making himself useful in the garden, and letting himself be distracted by the gardener.
Charley (Diego Alvarez Garcia) is lean with toned muscle and he makes gardening look like pornography. Andy is immediately fascinated by him. But Charly has a lot of growing up of his own to do. Casually exploitative, he strings the boy along, at times showing real sympathy, at times using him as a means of getting money, drawing him into petty crime and this is easy to do since no one is paying attention to Andy's needs. Andy has to find his own way through life at a particularly difficult stage. Puente is excellent as Andy. He shows us his grief and inner conflict and also the subtler emotions that accompany developing awareness of how broken the world is. We have a sense that, for Andy, life will always be difficult, and he needs to develop new superpowers to cope with it.
The narrative takes place in the lush surroundings of the gardens and family orchards, where Andy helps pick fruit to make jams. The enormity of this landscape and its lack of any clear horizons reflect the boy's plight. Since he appears in almost every scene he provides us with a fragile point of focus as the world swirls around him.