Since his first fiction films, Gasolina (2008) and Marimbas del Infierno
(2010), that did not go unnoticed, Julio Hernandez-Cordon stays true to
his world. Adolescents on the slide, submitted to the necessary mayhem,
comedy overlaid with the pathetic, a documentary viewpoint that organises
a deliberately open fiction; using these lost souls like implicit allegories
of the destiny of Guatemala. This last offering is not an exception to the rule,
even if, for the first time, it is stamped with artifice: shot in a studio with
2D sets, the colour yellow reigning supreme, the use of masks, the schematisation
of characters and situations and a direct political message (a
sequence of archive footage opens the film.), etc.
Among the little tribe that gaily play out this fable, two characters stand out.
Pepe Moco, a mentally handicapped boy, who makes an advert for one of
the presidential candidates who promises to organise the first World Cup
in Guatemala. Beto is a kid who scales a town drawn in chalk, venting his
spleen on its walls, threatening passersby with balls. The two of them soon
become very close evoking the past and present of a country that does
harm. However, once again, this minimal script serves as an alibi an excuse
for making a work that mixes, as did Brecht, different registers, all blissfully
‘distanced’: a poem with melancholic accents, declarations on the cinema,
the possibility of making a film amongst friends. (JPR)