Film #16 — 1/1 Film from a Mexican or Central American Director; 4/6 Countries (Mexico)
Also filed under: A-One
By C. Ramsay
The short, introductory scene that kicks this film off is a perfect encapsulation of the atmosphere the rest of the film carries. Being unclear about the larger context, the audience is met with a child wandering the darkness of a home with a single candle, her intentions unknown but undeniably fixed. She walks slowly but resolutely, her steps at pace with the score, which is already swelling. Unwaveringly, she slices the throat of an adult who is surprised by her entrance into their room, their blood lavishly red against the backdrop of an otherwise black and white scene. The girl grins as the blood begins to pool, and the opening credits are queued into rolling. The colour grading for the remainder of the film is rich and vibrant.
Full of gothic melodramatic flair, the film centres around two young girls and their developing friendship: Veronica, an orphan with a penchant for witchcraft living with her nanny and sick grandmother, and Flavia, a wealthy atheist who comes from a loving home but joins the school mid-semester and is too shy to make friends aside from Veronica. In an effort to impress Flavia, Veronica begins trying to convince her that she’s a witch who wields great power, which both interests and scares the new girl. Though some of the spats between the kids seem comedic and overly juvenile, the film frames any tension between them not as a punchline, but out of understanding that from the girls’ perspectives the intensity is justified, even if it’s also humorous.
On a similar note, the point of view of the girls is prioritized the entire time. They have regular interactions with adults, but the emphasis is on the children, how they react, what they feel, and how such interactions end up colouring their behaviour down the line. Nearly every adult in the film remains faceless, the focus instead being on which types of physical characteristics might stand out to children: perfectly manicured and colourful nails, a favourite place to sit and the posture effected in the space, familiar and well-worn clothing. The only times we’re afforded the sight of an adult’s face is when they’re deceased or sickly. In these cases, the camera frames them from the children’s line of sight, emphasizing that only under these frighteningly drastic circumstances do the girls fully recognize the humanity in the person they’re seeing—someone who only once permanently silenced is no longer alienating by virtue of their advanced years or different experiences.
Reflectivity also plays a large role in the film, in numerous ways. While adults aren’t granted their faces, their influence is seen in how the girls speak, what they’re interested in, and how they choose to act. Though the girls put on a show of rigidity in their beliefs and personalities with each other, it is the actions of the other that shapes them most. Even when they’re speaking to each other, they’re shown reflecting a facial expression or general sentiment the other has just given or felt, and the way they move ends up becoming more and more mirrored as the film goes on. Actual mirrors are also sometimes used to show parts of rooms that wouldn’t otherwise be visible, deepening the audience’s understanding of the characters by introducing them to more details of their space. It’s notable that the furniture visible in some of the mirrors will sometimes move from one shot to the next. While this could be a string of continuity errors, it seems just as possible that it’s meant to sit in the viewer’s subconscious, unsettling us in the same ways that the ever-shifting corridors of the Overlook Hotel are meant to in The Shining.
Regardless of what’s meant to be real or imagined in the film, Veronica is an outspoken orphaned child struggling to cope after a life-changing experience, acting out in unhealthy ways out of desperation for affection and validation, while Flavia is a shy, isolated girl raised without religious beliefs who’s curious, though scared of, the mechanics of the world she may have missed in her upbringing. Their friendship results in a simmering struggle to either maintain or correct the power imbalance between them, with both improvising how to do so in disastrous ways.
Star rating (/5): ★★★★
Recommend?: Yes