A dream left in a matchbox This film can be described by the word “down”. The name of the picture is a slang designation of the inhabitants of a number of working quarters, so to speak, a reduced vocabulary. The quarter itself is located in the valley, below, at the foot of the hill, on which, apparently, people live more solidly. And the two main characters - teenagers Cagagliera and Moloteko - life in the quarter gradually pulls down. From the clown performance on the bus that begins the movie to crime. Surprisingly, crime constantly flows from one form to another, as if Cagallera, like a turbulent, key-beating young stream of water, is trying to find some form in the world of one of the outskirts of Mexico City, but instead only fills with mud blurred around itself.
A matchbox. What could be cheaper, smaller and more common? But not on a bundle of money, but on a box of matches, Cagallera saw his dream - a circus show in Las Vegas. Sociability, sensitivity towards other people would make this guy a great artist. But this artist wants success here and now, right on the narrow streets filled with tired workers. Who will not play with you in a grateful audience. The desire to get out of this dump and artistic nature, suggesting an exit in a kind of game with adults. To “outplay” the authorities – an aggressive and drinking father, beating his wife with children, as well as a butcher – an informal head of the district, conducting a fairly successful business. And the more resolutely an inexperienced actor enters this game, the more ridiculous, weaker and smaller he looks, as if shrinking to the size of the same matchbox in which he left his dream.
Director Gael García Bernal perfectly reveals the characters of even the secondary characters of the film, which makes the growing pace of the film does not tire, but makes the viewer’s heart freeze in the most dramatic episodes, such as the gathering of people in the square. Behind the overall dynamics of a really powerful scenario, one can not see one of the most subtle plot lines - Cagallera's relationship with his girlfriend Suhili, who at some distant level of reflection, as if refracted by decades of age difference, repeat the relationship of Cagallera's parents. Suhili's look in the final scene is the same as that of a novice clown's mother on the fateful night. Not femininely harsh. The look of a woman who saw the pettiness of someone who could be her man. The shallowness of the size of a matchbox, which can last for several days, but not for years of living together.
7 out of 10
Original