 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: La región salvaje aka Untamed • Year: 2016 • Country: Mexico • Director: Amat Escalante • Main cast: Ruth Ramos, Simone Bucio, Jesus Meza, Eden Villavicencio • Runtime: 100 minutes • Production company: Adomeit Film, Bord Cadre Films • TRAILER (not available) |
I must recognise this new movie from director Amat Escalante was one of the films I expected the most to see at Sitges Film Festival 2016, after he left me deeply touched with Heli on 2013. His narrative of the human being in that Mexican realism is diverted this time towards the metaphor through fiction (or science fiction) without losing the everyday closeness that I believe characterises his work.
This seemingly normal story shows us a series of characters from a small provincial city whose lives are falling apart due to strong family values and homophobia, and who see themselves trapped in their relationships, unsatisfied regarding the loving/sexual part. In a very subtle, intelligent way, Amat Escalante approaches us the spectator towards the conflict, and introduces an unexpected getaway that acts both as science fiction as well as narrative resource for the drama situation. If you watch this movie looking for a great sci-fi story, you’ll probably be disappointed, because, from my point of view, this is not the movie’s goal.
The protagonists are offered an exit to their love crisis, only they must ensure that the remedy is not worse than the disease. A complex, even philosophical theme such as love is here treated from a different approach and placing the emphasis on sex and human need for pleasure. The fiction touch on the daily drama allows a personification of this wild, savage, untamed region that each one of us have and that is represented here as the natural sexual instinct itself. The most basic, primitive side that “will never extinguish, it will only be perfected”, as said on the film.
With such literal approach, this story about entrapping relationships that are no good, about hurting love feelings and sexual needs and desires, becomes a slow paced motion film that drifts us towards the human essence (ironic and expressly in an alien form?) and thinks about the place for our primitive instincts in the actual conception of society. Awarded at the Venice Film Festival with Best Direction, although not the director’s best piece, La región salvaje aka Untamed is definitely worth a try.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5265960
