Güeros
Set amidst the 1999 student strikes in Mexico City, this coming-of-age tale finds two brothers venturing through the city in a sentimental search for an aging legendary musician. Shot in black-and-white, Güeros brims with youthful exuberance.
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- Cast:
- Sebastián Aguirre , Tenoch Huerta Mejía , Leonardo Ortizgris , Ilse Salas , Raúl Briones , Sophie Alexander-Katz , Adrián Ladrón
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Reviews
Captivating movie !
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Not worth a watch, I'm surprised by the good reviews it's getting, making me think that the people involved in the film are the ones writing the good reviews. Shot in black and white for no reason, follows 4 people doing nothing and fails in portraying the student's movement that serves as a background. it's just boring, I felt that they tried to achieve something like the great "Duck Season" but they failed, if you haven't watched Duck Season, watch that instead. This just gives me no more material to write about. Describing this in a sentence I'll just go for: A plain road trip with no interesting characters that will waste your time
I know this might come out as a little pretentious, but to fully get the movie you've got to be at least acquainted with a little bit of recent Mexican history. The references are funny but well carried out: the University's strike of 1999, the massive concert at Avandaro in the 60s, the Oxxo/K/7eleven (convenience stores) as a place of nocturnal gathering and longing for alcohol, cigarettes and cheap burritos, the high-scale parties crashed by ironic outsiders, Tlatelolco as a locus of the tragic 1985 earthquake--all of these refer, not quite just satirically but neither quite seriously, to essential turning points of the history of Mexico City from the second half of the XXth century on. In a sense, the movie is a road movie--telling the story of the City from the nostalgic perspective of someone who has dwelled at its most intense venues. You get to see the innards of massive department buildings, the zoo, a homeless performing its deliciously enticing, endless discourse on his life, the national university at its more heightened political ventures, downtown, marginal pulquerias (places where pulque, is sold), and the demonstrations at the middle of a high-speed road. There is not much more of a common thread amongst all the scenes apart from looking for an old, decadent hero that personally influenced the main characters; the longing for love, the running away from untold fears. But not much more is needed; if you've ever been on an all-night party at the City, indifferently to your economic background, you'll find yourself reflected in the sequences.
A voguish feature debut from Mexican filmmaker Alonso Riuzpalacios, shot entirely in Black and White with an uncommon 1.37:1 aspect ratio. GUEROS is a pristine debut full of promise but also sink into the filmmaker's own ideal existential wallow.In the opening scenes, the film directly prints the explanation of the word "güeros" on the screen, in case us foreign audience cannot catch the meaning, and it proposes two options, it is either a discrimination against colour or against homosexuality. And the film only deals one of the two. Set the backdrop of an undefined time (where Walkman is still popular, I suppose, should be in the 90s), Tomás (Aguirre) is a young boy lived with his widow mother, being too naughty, he is sent to live with his big brother Federico aka. Sombra (Huerta), who is a college student living with his roommate Santos (Ortizgris) in their messy apartment.While the university students are in the middle of a massive strike. The trio lay around in the apartment doing nothing. Since Tomás is a devotee of an over-the-hill musician Epigmenio Cruz (Charpener), who is sent to hospital due to poor health, the news triggers his quest to find him and ask for an autograph. So the story maunders around a two-day road trip, en route they visit the hospital, bump into some dangerous thug, reunite with Ana (Salas), a fervent activist student in the campus, party-crash, go to the zoo while Sombra has to face his worst nightmare, a tiger, and eventually track down Epigmenio in a remote cantina. Ostensibly, it is another plot-doesn't-matter ethos-journey combined with political agenda, budding romance, surrealistic touch, fly-on-the-wall realism and the dry humour.The picture exudes appealing élan thanks to its swift camera movement, monochromatic freshness and the idiosyncratic treatment of the fictional Cruz's music - a muffled void defies categorisation. But, the momentum doesn't hold up, soon, the journey deflates into an aimless wander, pry into the underbelly of a contemporary Mexico but never reach a cinematic catharsis or produce any prospective worth of excitement, the main characters are bankrupt of any empathy or charisma to keep up audience's attention of their often arbitrary behaviour. It is a film eventually fails to live up to its master-class craftsmanship, but considering its successful tournament in the international festival circuits, I might again find myself in a minority of one, to each his own taste, GÜEROS doesn't emerge as a comprehensively outstanding film in spite of its uniqueness.
This movie is black and white and it has a different frame ratio. At first, i thought they were going to do it because they wanted it to look like an art film but if you ask me, from what i watched, i am certain that this was done because of artistic and also satiric reasons. This movie is a great drama and also is a great comedy. Directing is really unique. Movie doesn't treat it's audience like they are stupid people. Movie respects the audience. For example, instead of a broken elevator sign, you see the inside of the elevator and you see that it doesn't come. When the character goes in a dark room, actor isn't pretending to be in a dark room, it is not a low lighted room that you can see but actor can't, you also can't see anything and it feels real. When a character closes other's eyes, before you see that, also your view is blocked by hands on the camera, which is your eyes. You feel like you are inside the film and it is amazingly done. When they listen to the song that should be amazing you hear nothing at all because they want you to imagine it since it will be different for everyone. And there is a scene in the school that it is really really funny and intelligently done. I won't spoil but i was laughing way too much at it. Movie tells a few different stories, panic attack, love, friendship, revolution and a whole other themes that are followed by their own scenes. Every thing in the movie leads somewhere and in every ending, it remind us that the world is cruel.Movie is funny, dramatic and exciting and overall it is very good. It makes fun of the Mexican so called art movies and also that maybe the cause of the black and white colour of the film. And it succeeds to be satiric in a good way. I am giving this 8/10 because i felt like it dragged a little on the last act. But, nonetheless i found it to be very intelligent.