Locarno Film Festival 2021: Mostro (Concorso Cineasti del presente) | Review
An auspicious dreamy debut by José Pablo Escamilla, tells a Mexican story of corruption and disorientation, now playing at the 74th Locarno Film Festival.
The 74th Locarno Film Festival is a good place to discover new talents’ work, including José Pablo Escamilla’s Mostro (Mexico, 77 min, 2021), presented in the section entitled “Concorso Cineasti del presente”.
As the synopsis points out, a couple of teenage factory workers spend their afternoons consuming chemical substances in a self-constructed shack. The ecstatic trips and the visions they experience make them forget their noisy industrial city life for a moment. But when Alexandra disappears right before his eyes, Lucas must deal with a corrupted system. His visions decay, just like the monster that imprisons them.
Opening with a luminous dream sequence, beginning in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, we hear our narrator, Lucas, sharing his dream of memory, wonderment, and loneliness. The dream shows a celebration of sorts with narration of illogical memories. This best describes in both the social context and life of the main character, Lucas. José Pablo Escamilla’s Mostro doesn’t shy away from its slow, but dreamy aesthetic which separates his own sense of originality from straight forward narratives. Back to reality, teenager Lucas, a factory worker takes the bus to the factory early in the morning and prepares crates of various supplies to be shipped. After his morning shift, he is visited by the one shining light in his life, his friend or partner, Alex.
Alex and Lucas go and walk along the rural landscapes of this semi-primitive Mexico town with rich conversations of their lives and “future”. It appears it has been a while since they’ve seen each other adding mysteriousness, but they catch up with each other without skipping a beat. The two discuss plans of wanting to leave this town and start a new life, with Alex being optimistic and energetic, and Lucas, hesitant. They find an old abandoned, but usual spot in a truck bed top in a secluded grassy area, to relax and participate in huffing canned air to experience short-term euphoric highs. This leads to a experimental montage trip interrupted by the police, where the two run off to escape, only leaving Lucas to getaway freely.
Although the energy peaked to this point thanks to the charismatic Alex, it was time for Lucas (and the film) to come down from that short-term high and back to this dystopian reality. Lucas, not sure what to do, goes to the police and an investigator tries to help him, but to no avail, provide much to him. Disoriented and hopeless, Lucas’ life hits a downward spiral showing us another side of subtle corruptness of the Mexican police. Lucas’ memories start to disassociate with reality by Escamilla including experimental montages of Lucas’ dreams reflecting his mood. Excelling in only showing what is necessary, Escamilla does not explain everything, but shows us what we need in order to understand. The Mexican police’s “investigation” and denial of Alex, is subtle, but frustrating to Alex, not allowing him to comprehend this corrupt society, allowing his hopelessness to affect his mental state.
Surprising enough, Escamilla’s experimentation of aspect ratios, digital pixelated disruption of memories, and short bursts of hyper-ecliptic montages, fed into the story’s theme of memories excellently. His camerawork of tracking shots in the narrative story showcases brilliant pictures of the rural side of the town. Escamilla’s sense of vanishment is lead by the muted Lucas, who goes through an emotional journey of vanishment within himself and society. Mostro by Escamilla is one of the more original films due to his unique sensibilities, showing the world (and literally the frame) closing in on Lucas.
