Abel (2010)

Directed by: Diego Luna | 87 minutes | drama | Actors: Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, Geraldine Alejandra, Karina Gidi, Gerardo Ruíz-Esparza, José María Yazpik

The young Mexican actor Diego Luna, best known for his strong role in ‘Y tu mamá también’, has recently plunged into a career as a director. With ‘Abel’ he makes an impressive debut, which is partly due to the fantastic acting performances of the young Christopher Ruíz-Esparza who plays Abel. His real brother Geraldo plays Paul, Abel’s younger brother. The two are moving in every scene and, despite their inexperience in acting, carry half the film. The other half is due to the original plot and the sensitive way in which Luna has portrayed the whole.

After his father’s departure, young Abel has a mental breakdown until he even has to be taken to a mental institution. His mother believes that the warmth of his own family will be the best cure for Abel’s condition and decides to bring him back home. When Abel opens his mouth again for the first time in months, it is not childish nonsense but serious sentences that make clear Abel’s new role in the family. The camera follows its internal world closely, without judgment or suggestion but calmly, sometimes funny and sometimes tragic. But always so that you understand Abel’s thinking steps and can’t blame him. Luna strikes a nice balance between witty moments and bitter seriousness, as many young Latin American filmmakers can. When the focus is on mother Cecilia, the real father or the teenage sister of Abel, it becomes clear that Luna can also cope with a more ‘adult’ perspective.

Not only the presence of young children in the lead role, as well as the absence of the father figure (literally and figuratively), is often typical of national cinema of Latin American origin. As Luna herself emphasizes, he chose the theme of an absent father because it is so prevalent in Mexican reality and thus largely determines Mexican identity. More symbolically, fatherlessness also refers to a Mexican identity to be redefined. The construction of a relatively young nation – after the time of the heroes of the Mexican revolution – is accompanied by this new identity. Abel, his little brother Paul and their teenage sister Selena watch their mother, wife, do it alone, while father has run away, ostensibly to make money in the United States, but in reality to go with his second wife and new baby live. When he returns, it will be mainly for the stables he wants to sell and take from them the last bit of money he left the family.

Abel takes his new role as a father figure seriously, just as a child takes the future seriously. A new order with re-disciplined will help the family move forward. Abel clearly struggles with the conservative ideals he remembers from the past (although he knows how to command Cecilia very convincingly) and his own childish instincts, such as playing whole afternoons in a tent in the barn with brother Paul. This conflict can also be read with a symbolic, broader meaning. The last part of the story is ultimately inevitable. Diego Luna has put himself on the map as a director, and hopefully will be heard a lot more – preferably as a director and actor.