Drinks, massages, infinity pool, private lodges

Two adults, two teens

Breakfast with margaritas and hard liquor

We play, we laugh, we eat, we drink.

He, very quiet, bathes abandoned on a yellow plastic mat, falls asleep.

She thanks him for being with them.

They all come from London, from a family of wealthy cattle industrialists.

A call comes in that forces them to leave for Europe immediately

Neil makes up an excuse not to leave; he stays in a miserable hotel on Acapulco's most popular beach.

Alice does not understand, calls him, writes to him.

She returns to Acapulco where she is ambushed after Neil signs away his inheritance...

The two now heirs return for further signature by Neil, who is now entertaining himself with a local young woman.

He falls asleep in plastic chairs, confused and plagued by brief hallucinations.

Hypothetical family unit

Hypothetical marital crisis

Hypothetical catatonic depression

Michel Franco likes to mess up plans, visions; he shatters the viewer's curiosity with cunning; he identifies alternative paths, disregards expectations. He aims at Mexican reality with a cold if fierce and cruel gaze.

In the existential apathy of the protagonist, in his disconnection from the world around him, social, political, emotional, of origin and acquisition, there is the emblem of the loss of interest in life, the world, meaning.

The quest for oblivion is an extreme gesture of revolt, Camus would say,especially when life infects you and makes you the " stranger" of it.

The need to be free from family, economic, sentimental constraints structures Neil's existential choice, an inescapable, inexorable, radical decision of freedom!

Michel Franco's plea, muted, shocking, apodictic, screams and claims

a right that is still debated in many parts of the world, broken, unheard, extreme act of freedom.

27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice