TESSA IA IN AFTER LUCIA

Bereavement, bullying, blowback

It's funny to go from Mike Ott's very natural and organic American indie films Littlerock and Pearblossom Highway to one that's completely self-conscious, contrived, and staged. An IMDb viewer's suggestion that Franco is a "new Mexican Haneke" is going overboard. He lacks Haneke's boldness and mastery, and this doesn't seem like a Haneke topic. Franco may deserve credit for depicting the nastiness of bullying with chilly thoroughness. Either this is a newly widespread phenomenon or there's a newly pervasive awareness of it. "Bullying" -- the English word is used also in other languages for this hot button topic. If Después de Lucía is to be believed, it's just as ugly at upscale Mexico City high schools as in the United States. This won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes (jury headed by Tim Roth) and was Mexico's entry for the Best Foreign Oscar of 2013. But I have reservations about it. It's an example of taking one idea and hitting on it over and over relentlessly, except for a morally dubious finale that caters to the worst impulses in the audience, and there are elements that seem implausible. Ultimately despite its rubbing our noses in cruel teen behavior for a while, this film doesn't so much fully develop the theme of bullying and its consequences as use it, to cite Charles Grant of Variety, as "an attention-grabbing hook."

Lucía is the wife and mother, dead in a car accident. Her widower (Gonzalo Vega Jr.), a successful chef, and their teenage daughter Alejandra (Tessa Ia), move from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City to a new restaurant (for him) and a new posh school (for her). They're cut off from emotion, he especially, but then according to Letterboxed contributor Preston, Franco may have started off meaning to do something "sober" and then been "carried away by the more sensational aspects." This seems unlikely but the parts don't quite fit. Others (back to IMDb) suggest the first 40 minutes are just deadly dull and could be lopped off. Alejandra falls in quickly with the in crowd at school (but we know those seek victims) and is doing well; her father plainly isn't. But then Alejandra gets drunk at a party and has sex with the alpha girl's boyfriend José (Gonzalo Vega Sisto), which he cellphone-films. It goes around the school, and the attacks begin, gradually escalating and peaking on a school trip to Veracruz -- a surprisingly boozy and druggy one (one of the implausibilities) given that it's a school trip and the school has rigorous drug tests. At first "Alé" fights back vigorously to her tormenters but she becomes more and more meek and passive, borderline catatonic on the trip. Due to her dad's having a hard time, she tells him nothing till things get quite advanced.

Then things take several new directions, essentially dropping the social issue of bullying for other outcomes, partly unexpected. Franco maintains cool art house style with diegetic sound, no music, a measured pace, avoiding conventional mainstream appeal. The effect sometimes is to make shots uninformative. Certain group scenes of the kids seem unconvincing, the non actors, reportedly some of them Ia's real life classmates, perhaps not well directed; and some of the scenes shot from the middle distance aren't wholly clear. However the latter part certainly deserves credit for being surprising and exciting, especially compared to the beginning.

Después de Lucía, 93 mins., debuted at Cannes as mentioned May 2012, included at a number of major festivals including London, Glasgow, and Rio with releases in various countries, including France (critical response fine: Allociné press rating 3.7). Also included in the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was screened for this review (showing 26 and 29 April 2013).

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.