Dir. Carlos Reygadas
First things first: why is it that Mexican films seem to have the unique ability, alone among non-English-language films, to have their titles referred to in the original (Spanish) language? I cite Japón, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Amores Perros as examples. Even films from Spain don’t get that treatment (cf Almodovar’s Talk to Her). Not that knowing what “Japón” means would make any difference to your understanding of the film anyway - I presume naming a film after Japan when it has absolutely nothing to do with Japan is a reference to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil…
So on to the actual film. I read nothing but raves of Japónfrom when it played at Cannes, but I do think you have to be in a certain mood to see it. Today I was extremely antsy (the “watch-watch” - i.e. the moment I checked my watch to see how long the show had run - stood at a low 20 minutes), and in any case I’m already predisposed toward frenetic movies, and so what I appreciate intellectually was probably actually well-paced langour struck me as ponderous. I’ll try to be fair. Reygadas does great things with light here - as I’ve said in other places, tropical light has a squint-inducing, almost obliterating, quality to it, and in Japon the light is so bright it practically bleaches the dust and sand white, creating some sort of quasi-mythical landscape. Which contrasts quite starkly, I thought, with Y Tu Mama Tambien, my favourite film of Film Fest 2002, which is very much grounded in the particulars of rural Mexico. Here, if it weren’t for the giant Corona logo, the barren land could be anywhere in tropical Central or South America I thought. (Actually, I don’t really know - maybe Corona is everywhere in Latin America and so even that isn’t Mexico-specific?) It’s like we’re in some moonscape, some sort of frozen time moment. I found it fascinating that Alejandro Ferretis (the lead - I’m naming the actor, since I don’t think he was named anywhere in the film) was edging toward death, which is a condition with a time component implied (you have to be alive at one point to be dead, i.e. there are two separate times needed to generate death), in what seemed like a time-stopped world.
The part near the end, where Ferretis is sleeping on the bed in a Jesus Christ pose (Soundgarden reference!) while Ascen (Magdalena Flores) is in church looking at a Catholic crucifix is spectacular: in her smile we suddenly see the alignment of sex and redemption. The way Japón explores the closeness of sex and death - two different forms of annihilation - made me think, actually, of mediaeval literature (Pasolini’s films reignited my memory of mediaeval texts, I suppose) and how mediaeval writers (Chaucer et al) often used death as a metaphor for sex. The affinity of sex and death, seeming opposites: wasn’t that theme in Y Tu Mama Tambien too? Maybe, out in nowhere, without the detritus of cities and civilisation, we are reduced to the essential human questions - and what are more essential to the human condition than sex and death?
Random thoughts: A.O. Scott call this film Y Tu Grandmama Tambien in the New York Times, which I thought was a funny line… the scene where the worker sings tunelessly reminded me of the worst singer I’ve ever encountered in my life, a panhandler in Harvard Square who would try to sing along to whatever was on the radio. So you’d hear the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” as spoken-word poetry… I had the misfortune of being behind a tall person in a subtitled movie.