Sundance: The elegiac poetry of 'Dos Estaciones'

by Cláudio Alves

Director Juan Pablo González comes from a family of tequila makers in the Jalisco highlands of Mexico. Though never outright stated, such biographical details inform in his fiction feature debut. Dos Estaciones is a love letter to the region and the noble artisanship of making tequila de old-fashioned way, from the azure expansions of the agave fields to the shiny glass bottle. However, it's also a eulogy, a cry of mourning for a dying world. Foreign pressures threaten the long history of the land, buying the fields and factories from families who've owned them for generations. A Mexican tradition thus becomes an American commodity, and there's little to do but honor what's lost, show people its value, its intrinsic beauty, resist through art and remembering…

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