Sebastian Molina Ruiz’s Kill ‘Em All combines grungy video aesthetics and epistolary elements to explore a sense of teenage isolation.
The nature of the burgeoning relationship between Mila (Mila Mijangos) and María (María Villanueva) remains somewhat ambiguous, but it is quickly evident that they have never met. As such, the plan is to consummate an online friendship in person during the summer, when María’s band are playing a gig and Mila has a ticket waiting for her at the door. Through the build-up to and depiction of this scenario, Molina Ruiz creates an understated but affecting drama that hints at various insecurities and maladies afflicting its young protagonists, and a more innate dislocation that seems to as part and parcel of a transitory, digital, contemporary life.
Molina Ruiz opens the film with grainy digital video, filmed by the two girls themselves as they send introductions to one another. “Valentina told me I almost never post photos,” explains María, so she wants to be sure Mila would recognise her. These video profiles are filled with minor qualms about their appearances, about the value of what they’re saying – the underlying reservation, particularly in Mila’s case, seems to be about her value. It is Mila with whom the film remains when the self-recorded segments finish. With a documentarian’s eye, the director and his DoP, Ángel Jara Taboada, capture the discreet patterns of Mila’s life as she skates along deserted streets and sheepishly adds her name to the graffiti in a rundown city park.
By never showing the audience the reality of María’s life beyond that which she presents in her video, we’re left to form our conclusions in much the same way that Mila must. In a narrated message, Mila describes a dream where her anxieties are starkly juxtaposed against María’s self-assurance. Even before she turns away from the pivotal gig without going inside, even before she calls an ex-boyfriend for comfort and then flees him in tears, her uncertainty is evident. Long before its disquieting coda in which Mila reveals the suicide of a classmate and speculates about the impact her departure from a place, or even ceasing to exist, would have, the film presents a finely calibrated portrait of a peculiar, indefinable malaise – one that is hinted at but glossed over in the videoed footage. The distance between who we wish to be, want not to be, and ultimately who we are is probed here with delicacy and poise.
Directors: Sebastian Molina Ruiz
Cast: Mila Mijangos, María Villanueva, Derek Curiel
Producers: Sebastian Molina Ruiz, Daniela Mosca, Diandra Arriaga
Cinematography: Ángel Jara Taboada
Editing: Andrea Rabasa, Sebastian Molina Ruiz
Sound: Talia Ruiz Tovar, Miguel Angel Molina Gutierrez
Sound design, sound mixing: Tristan Lhomme
Production: Colectivo Colmena (Mexico)
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Pardi di domani: Concorso Corti d’autore)
In Spanish
19 minutes
