Léalo en español
Road movies, born in the American cinema of the Seventies, are transgressive by nature. Their characters behave as they would not in the place where they live; their relationship with weapons, romantic adventures and motorcycles is relaxed, and the viewer doesn’t need to suspend reality to consider it natural. The actions are circumscribed to a specific moment and there are no consequences, at least we do not see them on screen. What happens on the road, stays on the road.
In Upon Open Sky, a terrible road accident in which the father of teenage brothers Fernando and Salvador dies, stays with the boys and haunts them. Two years later, Fernando is obsessed with doing amateur forensic reconstructions of car accidents. Salvador, who was with his father in the accident, says he does not remember anything that happened.
The trauma of the accident obsesses them and becomes so heavy that they decide to go to the place where it occurred, in the state of Coahuila, to look for an explanation about what happened. They are accompanied by their stepsister Paula and her boyfriend Eduardo.
For each of the participants in the expedition, the trip means something different: for Fernando revenge, for Salvador closure. Eduardo sees it as an opportunity to sleep with a reticent Paula. Her reasons are a mystery; maybe she is just bored or wants to fit in with her newly found family.
This is the first feature film directed by the siblings Mariana and Santiago Arriaga. The directors are new –they have directed short films up to now– but the script is very mature, written by Guillermo Arriaga, the Mexican novelist and screenwriter who, among other distinctions, received an award at Cannes for his screenplay The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in 2005.
Coahuila is a Mexican state in the north of the country with a large desert area bordering the United States, suitable for hunting, astronomical observations and illegal border crossings. Upon Open Sky is a road movie, and a coming-of-ager, and at times it is also a western, as shown by the revolver Fernando conceals, by the van they drive and the kind of clothes they wear. The frontier landscape seems to be familiar to the directors and they show it both in panoramas and small details.
The female participation in the film is intriguing. Given the female co-director, I expected women characters to play an important role. On one hand, the father who died two years earlier matters more than the living mother, who is portrayed as a distant woman and unimportant to the siblings. Their step-sister Paula’s mother died, conveniently, when she was a baby so there are no memories or ghosts. Paula appears to be, at the beginning of the film, a spoiled, bored teenager; she follows soap operas and only looks alive when she can tease her brothers. The surprise is that halfway through the story we realize Paula is not in the film as a sexual enticement or ornament. From the moment she makes a seemingly banal decision, she becomes an important part of the story, with enough weight to provoke reactions.
Theo Goldin deserves special note as Salvador: he is convincing as a teenager of 14 and later as a 16-year-old. During most of the film he is quiet, thoughtful, sometimes doubtful. Despite being the younger brother, he is in many moments the conciliatory presence and the one with better judgment. Goldin acts with great poise in moments of tension, as well as in a dramatic scene requiring great physical effort.
While being on the road, the action and relationships are also on the move. Once they stop, tensions that should increase do not do so and the narrative becomes somewhat irritating. What are they waiting for? Why don’t they do something? They look like they are camping, bored, dirty, and eating badly. Fortunately for them and the audience the outcome is dramatic but not overdone; something very uncommon in violent scenes in Mexican cinema. It’s as if the directors discover along with their characters that maturity does not come with revenge, but with self-restraint.
Directors: Mariana Arriaga, Santiago Arriaga
Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga
Cast: Federica García, Theo Goldin, Máximo Hollander, Julio César Cedillo, Sergio Mayer Mori, Julio Bracho, Cecilia Suárez, Manolo Cardona
Producers:Hugo Sigman,Guillermo Arriaga, Matias Mosteirin, Leticia Cristi
Executive Producers:Erendira Nuñez Larios,Diego Copello, Emiliano Torres, Morena Fernandez Quinteros.
Cinematography: Julián Apezteguía
Editor: Andrés Pepe Estrada
Music: Ludovico Einaudi
Sound: Jose E. Caldararo, Leandro de Loredo
Production design: Carlos Y. Jacques
Costume design: Gabriela Fernández
Production companies: Kramer & Sigman Films , Salvaje Films (Mexico) Clave Intelectual (Spain) –
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
Sales:Film Factory
In Spanish
117 minutes
