TOTEM, Mexico, 2023. Starring Naima Senties, Montserrat Maranon, Marisol Gase. Directed by Lila Aviles. 95 minutes. Rated M (Coarse language).
An engaging film full of humanity. It was the winner of the Ecumenical Prize (from a combined Catholic and Protestant Churches’ Jury) at the Berlin film Festival 2023. This is a Mexican film, written and directed by Lila Aviles with great sensitivity. The principal appeal is that the main focus is on a seven-year-old, Sol (short for Solecito), played so well by Senties. We spend much of the film watching her and expressions – so full of life with moments of happiness and moments of sadness. We are watching the adult world through her eyes.
Sol enjoys being with her young mother, joking, making wishes – especially a wish that her father would not die. And this means that there is an air of melancholy underlying the good humour of the film. Tona, her father, has terminal cancer, and is cared for at home by a maternal nurse, supported by his sisters and their children, and his elderly therapist father who needs an electro-larynx to speak.
In fact, the action of Totem takes place over a couple of hours. The plan is to hold a birthday party for Tona. One sister, Nuri, is cooking, baking and decorating the birthday cake, wonderfully caring for her little daughter, Esther, who can be full of pleasant mischief, but also drinking. The other sister, Alejandra, with two older children, is bossiness personified, even spending much needed money for Tona’s medical care, to invite in a woman who will go through rituals to cast out any evil powers.
We get to know so many of the members of the family rather well, liking some, wary of others. But, all the time, we are with Sol, wanting to see her father but his not being ready, so frail, struggling at times to walk, needing constant attention. When, eventually, she goes in to see her father with her mother, there is such joy for all of them.
Sol is an intelligent little girl, able to comment on adult themes about how the world ticks. She knows about birds (and her father gives her a beautiful gift of a large painting of her favourite birds), she plays with the insects, snails and ants, is observant.
Then the guests arrive for the party. Many of Tona’s friends from school days and the extended family. It is a Latin American party full of verve. While the film is something of a joyous hymn to life, it faces squarely the realities of illness and death. And we, the audience, respond to both but our awareness enhanced by our liking for and our sympathies with Sol and her childlike responses.
Hi Gloss films
Released 18 July