‘Ash in the mouth’, is Diego Luna’s new film as director
A few years ago, the Mexican writer Brenda Navarro achieved great success on both sides of the Atlantic with her novel “Ash in the mouth”. Diego Lunabest known for his successful acting career (“And your mother too”, “Narcos: Mexico”, “Andor”), has been in charge of bringing it to the cinema in a film that had its global premiere in one of the parallel sections of the last edition of the Cannes Festival. The underlying theme of the novel, like that of this adaptation of the same name, could not be more relevant: emigration. A reality that is embodied in the protagonist, an excellent Anna Díaz who puts herself in the shoes of Lucila.
When we first see her, she is in a small Mexican town. Her mother, Isabel (Adriana Paz), whispers goodbye to her at dawn. She begs him to take care of her little brother, Diego, who sleeps next to her and who is still just a child. Shortly after, we observe how the woman practically secretly leaves the house and heads to the street, where a car is waiting for her. Everything indicates that he is abandoning his family. It is a very powerful prologue, although, unfortunately, it is also the best scene of the film, which fails to maintain that intensity during the rest of its tight footage.
Eight years later the family has been reunited in Madrid, although it soon becomes clear that it remains broken in every other way. Lucila is already in her twenties and works as a nanny in unenviable conditions; Her brother (Diego Bautista) has become a tormented teenager – depressed, closed in on himself and with difficulties in relating – whom she continues to care for. It is evident that Diego needs urgent psychological help, but this is far from his possibilities. The situation becomes increasingly suffocating for Lucila, who begins to contemplate her own escape route: going with a friend to Barcelona. However, the tragedy that looms over her will follow her wherever she goes.
The gloomy panorama that the film draws around these three characters inevitably evokes neorealist cinema. The difficulties of this small family unit to make their way in a strange country remind us of great works such as “Grooves” (51), by José Antonio Nieves Conde, or “Rocco and his brothers” (60), by Luchino Visconti. In the case of the first, it was a family from southern Spain that arrived in Madrid; In the second, the emigrants came from Lucania and moved to Milan. However, the daily struggle for the survival of the poor and humiliated remains the same.
Neorealism has seen a small resurgence over the last decade thanks to the talents of directors like Sean Baker (“Anora”, “Tangerine”) or the Safdie brothers (“Heaven Knows What”, “Good Time”), who have known how to adapt their stories to the visual and sound language of the 21st century. The same cannot be said about “Ashes in the mouth”, although it is not without virtues either: it is a sober film, which avoids easy melodrama and prefers to show rather than preach. In addition, it has a magnificent performance by Anna Díaz, who sustains the story from beginning to end. All this is enough to make it a worthy film, although not to make it memorable.
