by Nick Taylor
You may have noticed the Oscar nominations were announced last week. I’m not super enthused about this year’s lineups, which has some predictable excellence without giving me any surprises to be psyched about. I’ve spent this week catching up on the International Film category, and for the second year in a row, I’m mostly underwhelmed by Oscar’s choices. But rather than solely ragging on the Academy’s choices, I’m here for celebration and advocacy. Tótem, the second film by writer/director Lila Avilés and Mexico’s Oscar-shortlisted submission, has been slowly rolling out in the US and other countries for the past week, and thank God for that. It’s one of the very best films of 2023 and deserves as big of an audience as it can get. Go watch it...
Some astute readers might remember having read about Tótem a few months ago, as one of several hundred reviews posted by our beloved Cláudio for the site’s International Film coverage. Normally we try not to cover the same films so close to each other, but Tótem is special enough to warrant these complimentary reviews. Especially with new Academy rules requiring International Film submissions to be released and eligible for Best Picture in the same year their country sends them, meaning I won’t get to shout Tótem’s praises for the next year knowing full well it won’t get nominated. There’s no better time like the present, so let’s get to praising this gem right the fuck now.
What’s special about Tótem can feel difficult to pin down, given a premise that invites easy platitudes and dichotomies. Our entrypoint into the film is a seven-year-old girl named Sol (Naima Senties), one of several engines driving this story but certainly the character we remain closest to. She and her mother Lucia (Iazua Larios) share a moment of levity in a public bathroom, a space that feels entirely “theirs” even as outside voices knocking at the door prevents any illusion they aren’t still obliged to others. They’re on the way to the house of Sol’s grandfather, where family and friends are convening to throw a giant birthday party for Sol’s father Tona (Mateo Garcia). Sol and Lucia hold their breath under a tunnel so they can make a wish, and Sol cheerily reports she wished her dad would not be so sick anymore and feel better. Lucia is caught by surprise and says nothing. She has no answer for her daughter. And the car ride continues.
This opening, the prologue to a larger drama as well as a fantastic short in itself, already displays many of the gifts Tótem will expand and deepen throughout its 95 minute runtime. A talent with natural lighting and camera placement, courtesy of DP Diego Tenorio, who negotiates a warm intimacy and an unknowable distance that registers as deeply specific to familial pushes and pulls. A keen ear for dialogue that builds a scene and implies wider contexts the audience may or may not learn about, and which each character may have different ideas about. A structure that maintains narrative momentum even as it curlicues into unexpected characters and tones, a gambit aided tremendously by Omar Guzman’s fluid editing. Rewatching the film made me think endlessly about how the scene-building and dialogue could work as a play, yet Avilés shoots and edits the film with supple, self-effacing cinematic agility.
In other words, reading what Tótem is about and how it moves doesn’t fully prepare you for actually watching it. Summaries of the film centered on the range of life experiences it encompasses, its portrait of day-to-day joys, hardships, and mundanity persevering in the face of a sadness which will only become heavier, are completely correct, yet those statements are more declarative than Tótem ever is. We simply appreciate the truths of these characters, a mosaic building upon itself one scene at a time.
Avilés captures imminently recognizable feelings of family togetherness and alienation, stitched to specific but never fully knowable characters. It’s incredible how lived-in every corner of this movie feels, especially once the party starts and we get to witness everyone’s tributes to Tona. A crowd of masks and an opera performance, so exuberantly enacted and movingly received, only make sense as thoughtful, loving celebrations of a person everyone knows will not be there next year.
It helps that single actor enables Avilés’s gambits in structure and POV, clearly with their writer/director’s guidance. Naíma Sentíes is sensational as Sol, pensive and reflective and utterly in-the-moment, seeing new sides of the adults in her life and working through feelings she’s not at all familiar with. Among the adults, I found Montserrant Marañón memorable as one of Sol's aunts, fraying at the edges and trying to hold onto any sense of order. As the long-anticipated Tona, Mateo Garcia is very moving, warm and waning. He is the life of the party, condensing Tótem's heartsore, loving ache in his toothy grin and wiry face. And though I can't find the actress's name, the client we see attending therapy in the grandfather's practice expresses such visceral, gut-wrenching hurt
In a lighter vein, I love a scene where an offscreen mother spends several minutes cajoling her tweenage kids to start cleaning the house like they were supposed to have done, only for the son to be so incompetent at vacuuming (either as a ruse or because he still hasn’t learned - which is worse?) and his mom exasperatedly starts demonstrating how to do it. It’s a great interaction, with no reason to be in the film except to color the world more. Tótem is full of scenes like this, and they’re as important as the more obviously “important” scenes of checked emotions and hushed conversation. And that’s how it always is, isn’t it? You try to make a good cake. You balance the checkbook. You try to do right by your kids and your family and yourself. Your brother is dying. Your dad is dying. One day his bed will be empty. You look into the light from the candles on your birthday cake, and the world around you will vanish, and finally, you will be alone.
Tótem is currently enjoying a limited release in American cinemas. After a qualifying run last year, this is the first time many will get to see it in theaters. See it as soon as possible if you get the chance.