TENEBROUS SCENE FROM FRIO METAL CLEMENTE CASTOR: FRÍO METAL (COLD METAL) (2025) NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2026 TEASERSpectral bodies and landscapes from Mexico A detailed discussion of this radicallly unusual film can be found on the Spanish-language "Cine Blog" "
Los Experimentos" entry penned by Jhonny Carvajal Orozco. There is no review online at the moment. There is tremendous use here, partly through the collaborative skill of French sound designer Thomas Becka, of disjunctive image and sound to create a strangeness worthy of David Lynch, though due to the intense locality of the imagery and indigenous non-actor cast, comparisons might logically be better drawn with the more bizarre current Latin American directors such as Carlos Reygadas (also Mexican) or Lisandro Alonso (from Argentina. Rather than following a conventional narrative Castor adopts a "drifting, nonlinear structure" linked with "flow cinema" that weaves in and out of themes. But at the same time there is an obsessive implied plotline focus involving two brothers, Óscar (Óscar Hernández), who has escaped from rehab, and Mario (Mario Banderas), who is troubled by images that "don’t belong" to him.
After the opening scene of a woman hawking a carnival roulette wheel, Mario consults with a card reader about this problem of his who forsees prison and other dire outcomes. There is a memorable session of dancing and almost erotically interlacing hands where one Lázaro (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez, the only professional actor in the film) teaches Mario how to use magical gestures to enter other people's bodies. The bodies Mario enters, explains Carvajal Orozco, are "simulated by subterranean landscapes." I sense here some of the inspired insanity one finds in the Salvador Dalì of his
Secret Life, for the landscapes here, sometimes dark, sometimes craggy, sometimes linked with mines, have similarities with the lunar, craggy landscape surrounding Dalì's beloved Portlligat, Cadaqués, Spain (Catalonia). There are also beautiful drone views from above in the film of mountainous overland landscapes covered with shrubbery.
The extended New Directors blurb says that after the spooky Lynchian introductory passage of
Frio Metal "the narrative emerges, like a soul from limbo, into low-key neorealist vignettes depicting adolescent languor in the cramped interiors and sprawling streetscape of the working-class Mexico City suburb of Iztapalapa." Well, maybe. We remain rather lost, and there is a sense of poverty and unhealthiness that is distracting and sad; but Clemente is interested in marginalized people. I like the scenes of the more in-form, strikingly profiled, bleached-blond brother Mario early on with nude torso where he twists and flexes and does little stretches that make him look like a ballet dancer and are pleasing and you could also call them languorous, I suppose - or sensuous, or show-offy.
When the ND/NF blurb says "Like Rivette, Castor rewrites his own rules and redraws his own map anew with every scene," it's a sign that this kind of cinematic experience can be profoundly disorienting. The trouble with this sort of cinema that makes so much rich surprising use of what's at hand is it's difficult to tell sometimes what the director's real intentions are - though in the "Practical Criticism" I was taught as a youth, caring about the artist's "intention" is a fallacy anyway, so maybe we should let go and not care about all that.
Frio is one of those true New Directors/New Films offerings that acts as a powerful palate cleanser, ridding the mind of conventional movie images and making us ready for new aural and visual experiences.
What of the theme of tattoos, and of board games? What of the neighborhood children rehearsing a play about the post-revolutionary period? The exploration of mines with blurry monochrome 16 mm. images? There is a strong documentary aspect to Clemente's filmmaking. His actors playing Mario ad Oscar, moreover, are friends of his. In an
interview with Carvajal Orozco he said, "They were playing someone who wasn't themselves, but there was also a lot of themselves in it." He added, though, "But I'm also interested in that other thing that doesn't exist, that isn't real or isn't so explicit, that is more supernatural, to a certain extent." There are other motifs as well, but how they fit in with the theme of the brothers is uncertain.
Still, Clemente Castor is onto something. We can tell from that interview that his concerns, though many, are serious and consistent. This guy is the real thing, an auteur. He spins a heady mixture, and at times the exotic contrasts weave cinematic magic of a kind rarely encountered in conventional movies. Attendees of New Directors/New Films who crave the series' edgier qualities are in for a special
frisson from
Frio. Frio Metal (Cold Metal), 102 mins., premiered at Marseille Jul. 10, 2025 where it won the Georges de Beauregard prize;, showing also at Lumen in Brazil Nov. 11. Screened for this review as part of 2026 New Directors/New Films at FLC and MoMA. ND/NF showtimes:
Wednesday, April 15
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Clemente Castor
Thursday, April 16
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Clemente Castor
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