Saturday, August 02, 2008

Movie Review

Bad Habits (Malos Habitos)
in spanish with English Subtitles.

Missing the opening scene is not always a good start to a foreign film but I managed to do just that while sitting down and getting comfy, my first scene was that of a Mexican family gathering round for a hearty family dinner feast and exchanging banter when the head of the family, Ramon, suddenly chokes on his food. A child prays silently to God to save Ramon whilst Elena, Gustavo and other family members rushes to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre which rescues him.

The act of choking, ironically during a family feast, ingeniously sets up the stage for the main message: the act and rejection of consumption.

The child who was earlier seen praying is introduced as Matilde (Jimena Ayala) who graduated from being a religious child into a fervently religious adult with a doctor’s degree. Upon completion of her studies and blinded by her faith, she becomes a nun. On hearing that her aunt is gravely ill, she takes upon herself to suffer by consuming vinegar straight from the bottle and a copious amount of salt with her daily intake of food, in hope of God’s mercy. When her aunt does miraculously recover, Matilde sees it as a reaffirmed testament of the strength of her faith and the raw presence of God. In turn, her religious faith rapidly consumes her escalating into an overzealous participation of a life-threatening fast, in which her faith and repentance will call upon God to cease the rain that is causing the deadly floods in Mexico.

Next, we have Linda (Elisa Vicedo), a pre-pubescent who is pressurized into losing her baby fat by her stylish and alarmingly thin mother, Elena (Elena de Haro). Elena’s rejection of excess food consumption is juxtaposed by her daughter’s need to consume, resulting in the latter being forced to see a nutritionist and later, an expensive diet clinic. As the movie progresses, we gradually realize that Elena’s strict, and unreasonable behaviour towards Linda’s eating habits is not driven by parental concern, but is a manifestation of her own eating disorder. Whilst Elena consumes herself with unrealistic ideals about weight, her marriage with Gustavo (Marco Treviño) crumbles. Finding no pleasure in having sex with his skeletal wife, he finds himself caught up in a fiery, sexually charged relationship with a voluptuous student in which his suppressed sexual and eating appetite reaches an absolute gratifying level of consumption.

As his first foray into indie film, director and co-scriptwriter Simón Bross creates a watchable and interesting movie on how food can be perceive and connected by our three main story. Clever camera angles that goes from scene to scene, coupled with single wide-angle shots from afar downplays the depth of the messages he tries to bring across. It does feels like watching three stand-alone short stories with minimal overlapping between the main characters. Given the impressive amount of material Bross has to cover in 104 minutes, the movie does feel slightly detached and unpolished for the sake of achieving the movie’s theme. The sounds of water and rain does comes across as another link to the characters from Matilde's desire to stop the flood, Elena's quench for weight-loss through obsessive workouts, Linda's fear of not losing weight to Gustavo's dilemma in finding out the source to the leak in the drainage pipes at the university. There is a nice touch of irony when Elena, Gustavo and Linda were brushing their teeth as a metaphor to hide their sins with reference to contact in food. You have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

Faith in God has totally consumed Matilde into obsessing with her fast, in the belief that it will move God to save his lost sheep. The other two stories, in focusing on the very flawed nature of humans, relates smoother with viewers on how in the search for perfection, humans overlook others, even loved ones and at times, their intentions produce an undesirable counter-effect. The director's vision to create depressing and hopeless atmosphere is without a doubt, spectacularly captured using lingering shots caught in dark, sedated colours, the sparsely placed, repetitive and monotonous background music, the lack of dialogue to the constant presence of pounding rain, a mood of the movie relentlessly reminded throughout.

The end of the movie also left us with some food for thought - Linda and Gustavo's guilt over the apparent death of Elena as well as Matilde's undressing of her nun's head gear and beads when it started to rain again, signalling her loss in faith and awakening to reality while watching over her sister's grave.

Movie Rating: Four out of Five.

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