Ixcanul (2015)

I think I put this film on my list for being different. Not only is it a rare entry from Guatemala; its main language is one I'd never heard of: Kaqchikel, of the Mayan family. It's also quite popular internationally but not widely discussed in the English-speaking world; neither IMDb nor Wikipedia presently tells us much about it. As for why I saw it last night, well, it's only 93 minutes.

In a mountain village, teen María has been promised in marriage to Ignacio, her father's employer at a coffee plantation, for the sake of job security. She'd rather welcome the advances of close-in-age Pepe, who plans to hoof it to the U.S. Pepe shows no such commitment to take her away, but he does put her "in the family way" before disappearing, thereby threatening her family's situation. The methods María and her parents have of dealing with the situation are highly informed by native traditions, which I can't recommend based on the results, but a trip to a Spanish-speaking city (with Ignacio as the translator!) doesn't help either....

The short runtime doesn't stop the film from feeling slow, not just in plot but in dialog. Minutes can pass without a word said, and then the addressee may spend many seconds composing a response if any. Feels kinda rude to me.

That may be primarily the fault of María. Some viewers praise the breakout star; others, like me, find her acting hard to gauge, as her character is about the least expressive teen girl on screen. About the only experience that can change her face or voice is the aforementioned sex, which, fair warning, is only partly consensual. Maybe the rest of the time, she feels so numb that it's almost all the same to her. Her mother, Juana, packs a good deal more punch.

The title is a variant on a word for "volcano," with a feminine prefix to drive home the analogy that Juana mother formulates: María is like the nearby volcano that separates them from Mexico. Well, the volcano never erupts in the course of the story; neither does María. That doesn't mean there isn't intense heat inside.

Apart from subject matter and acting, the main praise for the film concerns its beauty. While some Guatemalans thought it would hurt what little tourism industry they had, it's apparently doing the opposite. I always like a good forest, but I can't speak for the camerawork. Maybe I got too spoiled by my previous viewing (for which I hadn't mentioned the cinematography, but that's because it felt so natural that I didn't notice at the time). And certainly not every scene is beautiful: One of the earliest involves the slaughter of a pig, which I take not to be faked.

I suppose the director, Jayro Bustamante, wanted mostly realism and thus didn't bother much with spectacle. In truth, a surprise moment near the end feels like a good launching point for a more engaging (NPI) story, but that wasn't his point. He was introducing the world to a neglected corner of itself, albeit with just a touch of magical realism -- a Guatemalan inevitability, according to his interview.

In that regard, it succeeds. I didn't know how hard it could be to work the fields with all those snakes -- or to keep the job in the face of prejudices. I'd had little mental picture of the area and less still of that particular people. Their blend of Catholic and Mayan beliefs interested me. In their poverty and isolation, they seemed like transplants from centuries ago with a few modern accoutrements.

Indeed, despite a native majority, a popular sentiment in Guatemala is that their ways don't matter anymore. Many bigoted Guatemalans razzed this movie at the theater from the beginning -- until overseas hype told them to start cheering it on. Some viewers ascribe a sort of feminism to its mere focus on a marginalized young woman and mother, tho it doesn't portray what you'd likely call girl power. An ugly machismo lurks, possibly fomented by lingering racial tension.

Only by digging around for other reviews did I overcome my disappointment in Ixcanul, a feeling arising from a purely cinematic standpoint. Its chief value lies in semi-documentary content, not artistic ability in and of itself. See it to broaden yourself, not to enjoy yourself.