February 9, 2024
FILM: TOTEM
DIRECTED BY: LILA AVILES
STARRING: NAIMA SENTIES, MONTSERRAT MARANON, MAISOL GASE
RATING: 3 ½ out 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Mexico’s submission for this year’s Best International Film Oscar is a lightly comedic story of a family preparing for the birthday party of one of its seriously ill members. Writer/Director Lila Aviles lets the day unfold in a fairly brisk manner while introducing us to a variety of characters who are richly developed. The whole film essentially takes place in one day. It’s not a narrative with a lot of big plot twists or swings as it rests on the closeness of the family and their various flaws and eccentricities.
The film begins with young Sol and her mother trying on a flashy rainbow wig for a number they plan to perform at the party. Sol has a lot of personality, at one point she embraces solitude with her love of bugs and at another she demonstrates her rebellious nature in her desire to see her ill father Tona. He remains mostly inside his bedroom with a dutiful caretaker and is visibly weak and thin. There’s also a grandfather who talks through a voice box and is pestered by a few large birds around the home. One sister is an alcoholic while another is a bit obsessed with her hair. Then there are the cousins who arrive that are more interested (surprise!) in their cell phones and technology than wanting to lend hands in party preparation.
We spend most of the time with each of these characters. Some are pretty humorous such as a medium who is brought to cleanse the home of evil energy. At one point, one of the sisters and the medium walk around the house with a makeshift torch and attempt to push the bad energy away. Young child Esther asks her grandfather, “why does she walk around the house with a burning piece of bread?” To which he responds, “because they’re crazy.” It is this light humor that adds such insider family energy to the film. This could be a sad, morose story about people gathering near the end of a man’s life but the emphasis instead is on characters living in the moment and continuing with their usual anxieties and squabbles suggesting life continues to move on even when one is dying.
I think this is a reason why the film is also filled with images of other living creatures such as bugs and birds. They represent the ongoing cycle of life that continues beyond death. Of course, it is also poking fun at alternative therapies to deal with illness as well as our use of technology, such as phones and drones, to suggest other ways we deal with the defiance or limitations of our time on Earth.
Aviles does a great job directing the actors who give very naturalistic performances. I’ve no doubt there is a degree of improvisation here that allows for an even greater sense of reality to seep its way through the setting. Cameras are mostly placed at the level of a child, perhaps suggesting how some of them, such as Sol and Esther, witness the goings on throughout the day.
Overall, Totem is a very enjoyable film even with its undertones of illness and possible end of life. This is basically a family coming together to celebrate each other in spite of the dark turns that might await them.
Totem opens this week in limited release, including the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.
FILM: TOTEM
DIRECTED BY: LILA AVILES
STARRING: NAIMA SENTIES, MONTSERRAT MARANON, MAISOL GASE
RATING: 3 ½ out 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Mexico’s submission for this year’s Best International Film Oscar is a lightly comedic story of a family preparing for the birthday party of one of its seriously ill members. Writer/Director Lila Aviles lets the day unfold in a fairly brisk manner while introducing us to a variety of characters who are richly developed. The whole film essentially takes place in one day. It’s not a narrative with a lot of big plot twists or swings as it rests on the closeness of the family and their various flaws and eccentricities.
The film begins with young Sol and her mother trying on a flashy rainbow wig for a number they plan to perform at the party. Sol has a lot of personality, at one point she embraces solitude with her love of bugs and at another she demonstrates her rebellious nature in her desire to see her ill father Tona. He remains mostly inside his bedroom with a dutiful caretaker and is visibly weak and thin. There’s also a grandfather who talks through a voice box and is pestered by a few large birds around the home. One sister is an alcoholic while another is a bit obsessed with her hair. Then there are the cousins who arrive that are more interested (surprise!) in their cell phones and technology than wanting to lend hands in party preparation.
We spend most of the time with each of these characters. Some are pretty humorous such as a medium who is brought to cleanse the home of evil energy. At one point, one of the sisters and the medium walk around the house with a makeshift torch and attempt to push the bad energy away. Young child Esther asks her grandfather, “why does she walk around the house with a burning piece of bread?” To which he responds, “because they’re crazy.” It is this light humor that adds such insider family energy to the film. This could be a sad, morose story about people gathering near the end of a man’s life but the emphasis instead is on characters living in the moment and continuing with their usual anxieties and squabbles suggesting life continues to move on even when one is dying.
I think this is a reason why the film is also filled with images of other living creatures such as bugs and birds. They represent the ongoing cycle of life that continues beyond death. Of course, it is also poking fun at alternative therapies to deal with illness as well as our use of technology, such as phones and drones, to suggest other ways we deal with the defiance or limitations of our time on Earth.
Aviles does a great job directing the actors who give very naturalistic performances. I’ve no doubt there is a degree of improvisation here that allows for an even greater sense of reality to seep its way through the setting. Cameras are mostly placed at the level of a child, perhaps suggesting how some of them, such as Sol and Esther, witness the goings on throughout the day.
Overall, Totem is a very enjoyable film even with its undertones of illness and possible end of life. This is basically a family coming together to celebrate each other in spite of the dark turns that might await them.
Totem opens this week in limited release, including the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.