Mexico 86 (2024) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for every new wig or disguise
Take a Drink: for every discussion of a return to Guatemala
Take a Drink: whenever the newspaper article comes up
Do a Shot: whenever she’s pressured to separate from her son
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
While you likely associate Berenice Bejo with all things French, from The Artist to this year’s bonkers Under Paris, she was actually born in Argentina a native Spanish speaker. She has been exploring that side of her heritage more and more in recent years, including the underseen The Movie Teller and now this Locarno film festival debut.
Mexico 86 sees her playing a Guatemalan freedom fighter whose husband is killed in front of her by the national police. She escapes to Mexico to join a resistance cell there, leaving her son behind with her mother. Ten years pass…
A Toast
Director Cesar Diaz, who started out in film editing for films ranging from Amores Perros to Cadejo Blanco, creates a world of great tension and paranoid atmosphere for Bejo’s protagonist, who may be in Mexico but is far from out of reach of the Guatemalan secret police. This dilemma is heightened even more when her mother and son who she’s not seen for so long join her there.
Bejo with her very Elizabeth Jennings from The Americans wig game, is great as a woman torn between her revolutionary ideals and responsibilities and the practicalities of being a mother to her son and a daughter to her she soon learns is terminally ill mother. Her handlers/co-revolutionaries have no compassion for her, for good reason- relationships are liabilities, points of weakness, in this world, the perfect leverage points to get you to betray your ideals. The choice is impossible but necessary.
Beer Two
At 88 minutes, this movie may actually be too short- throws you right into these characters and their relationships and makes you infer a lot about them in a matter of minutes spanning years.
Verdict
Mexico 86 is a tense thriller in which a Guatemalan revolutionary faces choosing between her cause and her family.
