From the first scene of a coal black horse escaping from a rodeo and galloping free through the desert under a full moon (the symbolism of which only becomes apparent in the final shot), the Mexican drama Sujo sweeps the viewer up in an epic struggle for survival that has echoes of the American Western. Only in the last part of the story does another powerful theme emerge: the possibility for people to change what seems programmed into them as their inescapable destiny. An engrossing watch that keeps the stakes high and the tension glowing red hot, this story of the boy Sujo’s coming of age in the empty death culture of narcotrafficking is one of the most riveting Mexican films of the year. It is Mexico’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar.
After winning the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in Sundance, it has been riding through festivals and making a name for its young directing duo, Astrid Rondero (The Darkest Days of Us, 2017) and Fernanda Valadez (Identifying Features 2020), who also wrote and coproduced. Their understanding of narrative cinema at its most mythic and instinctual gives depth and emotional reach to this story about innocent kids sucked into a killing machine because of who their parents are and where they live. The film names Sujo’s region as Tierra Caliente, Michoacan, where ferocious drug cartels battle for control of the territory. This specificity gives the film an underlying realism and raises the threat, much like Tatiana Huezo’s chilling Prayers for the Stolen, in which young girls are kidnapped, abused and killed by marauding gangs.
Here, however, the children are boys who have been born earmarked to become criminals themselves. But Sujo is special: his father was a feared killer who was so ruthless he was tattooed with the number 8, showing his high rank as a gunman, much like 007. In an overgrown field, he is murdered off screen in cold blood, while his 4-year-old son waits for him locked in his car. Found by a goatherd, he is spirited away by his brooding aunt Nemesia (the wonderfully witchy Yadira Pérez Esteban), whose courage saves him from the men out to murder him in a revenge killing. She creates a solitary life for the two of them in a concrete shanty buried in the countryside, where her tough love and caring keeps young Sujo out of harm’s way. His only contact with other people comes from the occasional visits of Nemesia’s in-law Rosalia (Karla Garrido), a boss’s abandoned wife, and her two boys, Jeremy and Jai.
This protected situation can’t last, of course. When Sujo is 16 (he is played with open-hearted innocence by Juan Jesus Varela), his half-brothers help him get his father’s car running and he makes his first foray into town to see a prostitute. Jeremy has already been tattooed into a gang and Sujo joins him as a mule, delivering drug packages in his rickety car. Shot largely at night in the open air, the scenes of Sujo’s involvement in the cartel have a frightening inevitability about them, heightened by cinematographer Ximena Amann’s deep black shadows and outlines against the horizon. The nights are so dark that the only illumination is a starburst sky, or the sickening flames of a burning building.
The film is divided into parts named after various characters, which along with its two-hour running time, penchant for symbolism and epic narration, often makes it feel like the sprawling adaptation of a novel, even though Rondero and Valadez are shooting their original screenplay. This family saga unfolds against a background that is mostly taken from the world of harsh nature, and needs little embellishments in the visuals that dominate the story.
In the final part, called “Susan”, we find Sujo tenaciously building a new life for himself in Mexico City with the help of his aunt’s checks and a back-breaking night job unloading trucks. He spends the daytime hours auditing free university classes, where a teacher (an utterly realistic Sandra Lorenzano) who fled the dictatorship in Argentine many years ago befriends him. The contrast between his physically challenging, low-paying night job and the airy intellectual world he aspires to could not be better presented. It seems designed to answer Sujo’s question, “Can a person change?”, in the affirmative. But that is too simplistic a resolution to this story, and he has to deal with the wheel of time and the cycles of family history pulling him back to Tierra Caliente.
The uneasy clash of cultures is perfectly illustrated when Susan invites him to a faculty party. At a certain point, he sees guests staring at a video on someone’s phone: it shows a man — we never find out who — being gunned down during a drug war in Michoacan. Sujo just walks on. How can he ever explain what his life was like to these insulated city folk? Only Susan doesn’t need to “hear his story”, because of her own experience of violence and loss.
Directors, screenplay: Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez
Cast: Juan Jesús Varela, Yadira Perez Esteban, Sandra Lorenzano, Alexis Jassiel Varela, Jairo Hernández Ramírez, Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna, Karla Garrido
Producers: Jean-Baptiste Bailly-Maitre, Virginie Deesa, Astrid Rondero, Jewerl Ross, Fernanda Valadez
Cinematography: Ximena Amann
Editing: Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez, Susan Corda
Costume design: Aleja Sanchez
Music: Astrid Rondero
Sound: Omar Juarez Espino
Production companies: Corpulenta (Mexico), Enaguas Cine S.A. de C.V. (Mexico)
World Sales: Alpha Violet (France)
Venue: San Sebastian International Film Festival (Horizontes Latinos)
In Spanish
125 minutes
