La Civil

La Civil

Director – Teodora Mihai

Writers – Habacuc Antonio De Rosario, Teodora Mihai

2021 – Belgium-Romania-Mexico

Stars – Arcelia Ramírez, Álvaro Guerrero, Jorge A. Jimenez

 

From the Glasgow Film Festival.

When her daughter is kidnapped by a local gang, Cielo (Arcelia Ramírez) can’t let it lie although everyone takes is as just everyday life in Mexico.

With her daughter opening the film with a joke about Adam and Eve and Mexico being Paradise, the films lays out the religious nature of a culture who are in no illusion that they are living in a Hell, preyed on by cartels. Of course, such a narrow view of Mexico might be problematic as playing on stereotypical conceptions of the country for outsiders, but in the Q&A, Mihai makes it clear that it is based on a real person and stories. The emphasis is unwaveringly on Cielo, her increasing activism and unlikely emergence as amateur detective.

The camerawork is often the smash-and-grab of documentary film, which is Mihai’s background, but even then the focus is always on Cielo. The camera is never leaving this crusading mother’s side, even she joins an army attack on a cartel horror site. The violence is mostly heard as she wanders through the bloodstained rooms looking for her daughter. It is never quite “thrilling” or “exciting” in a superficial way, and in that way circumnavigates exploitation.

One poster has the tagline “Never underestimate a mother’s wrath”, with a gangster pointing a rifle for the kill against the backdrop of an explosion, but this is deceptive packaging as a revenge thriller. It’s feels more like “despair” than “wrath”, even when anger takes her over. Consistently melancholy and contemplative, the tone is not quite as all-out brutal as the unrelenting ‘Helo’, but the bleakness moves into a more conventional ‘Sicario’ rhythms as Cielo joins the military to witness and eventually participate in their questionable tactics. In this way, it follows more conventional thriller beats, but Ramírez’s performance as an unglamourous, average mother keeps things grounded, convincing and gripping throughout its runtime.