MAMI Film Festival - Day 5

Here are the film of Day 5 at the MAMI Film Festival.

Too Late to Die Young

If you're looking to revisit your childhood and teenage years and feel the memories rushing back, some good and some bad, Too Late to Die Young is the perfect recipe for it. Following a few families who get together in a remote vacation spot to celebrate the New Year's, it's less of a tale and more of a series of glimpses into the lives of these people, who have their own set of insecurities, crushes, daddy issues, mommy issues, drug abuse issues, etc.

It's well shot and acted, the tone is on point but it goes on for maybe a few minutes too many that drag the film down. It's also the 2nd film in this year's MAMI that deals with forest fires. A 3rd film is the one I watched next.

Roma

Arguably the most high profile film of this year's fest, Alfonso Cuaron's Roma is somehow dreamy yet realistic, characters from a time gone by yet still somehow real and alive in front of our eyes. A heartfelt story of a Mexican family and their maid during turbulent times in the 70s, it's easy to tell that it's semi-autobiographical for Cuaron. The detailing and genuineness with which the setting and the people are portrayed, only a person who has had a close interaction with them could tell it with this amount of authority and compassion.

Co-produced, co-edited, photographed, written and directed by the genius that he is, Cuaron has such complete control over every aspect of the film that it comes together with the smoothness that he intended. The black and white is crisp, punchy and vibrant all at once. The editing, which seems maybe too leisurely at the beginning, starts to make so much sense as the film progresses that you retroactively start loving those portions as well. These are, after all, real people in a real family. Something momentous doesn't need to happen in every scene. Sometimes, all of the family sitting together and laughing is good enough.

Roma also features 3 of the best sequences of not just MAMI but of all 2018 cinema: the furniture store, the hospital delivery and the beach waves scenes. Even if you put these scenes aside, this is a film by a director who is not just at the peak of his craft but also mature enough to allow himself to be emotionally vulnerable time after time, film after film. Roma will be out on Netflix soon enough but I feel lucky enough to be one of the very few to have caught it on the big screen, as it deserves to be.

Day 6

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1