A Mexico full of fire and blood, but also a Mexico full of nuances. This is what Amat Escalante, hitherto known for rather violent thrillers, is filming. Los Bastardos has Heli (director prize at Cannes) through the series Narcos: Mexico. But the Mexican director, who did not Luis Bunuel as a bedside filmmaker for nothing, likes to inject perversion here, sarcasm and irony there.
“Humor adds realism,” says the filmmaker. Life is full of incessant contradictions that we can choose to laugh at. » Amat Escalante nonetheless remains, and he says it, a director who has “developed a very strong social awareness” of his environment. Lost in the nightpresented last May at the Cannes Film Festival, appears to be a perfect synthesis of everything that makes Mexico in cinema today.
Police no help
The pitch is in three lines. In a small Mexican town, Emiliano searches for those responsible for his mother’s disappearance. An environmental activist, she opposed the local mining industry. Receiving no help from the police or the judicial system, quite the contrary, the young man follows alone a trail which leads him to the home of a rich family of contemporary Spanish artists.
From there, everything goes. And the suspense works in full force. Against a backdrop of corruption of the authorities, police violence, and rivalries between communities, Amat Escalante injects more original ideas into his plot, such as a certain whiff of colonialism from which the wealthy family cannot shake off. Or the idea of using trauma to transform it into a work of art. The film also embraces the times of social networks, a double-edged sword used here, and of course, thriller obliges, we cannot escape the murders, the revenge, the feeling of impunity sometimes counterbalanced by a strong guilt…
Justice for the youngest
In Lost in the night, hope fortunately comes from youth. It is the youngest characters who demand justice in the face of corrupt adults. The higher, the stronger. And it is not a hazard. “The world belongs to young people,” explains Amat Escalante. The future rests on their shoulders. When you’re young, a simple decision can seem like the most important decision of your life, but as you get older, you have regrets. I believe that young characters bring me light. »
The one who radiates this film, through the presence of its two main performers, Juan Daniel Garcia Trevino in the role of Emiliano and the young Spaniard Ester Exposito known for her role in the Elite series on Netflix. But the oldest actors, Barbara Mori and Fernado Bonilla who play the artistic couple full of complexity and guilt, are not bad either.