Lila Avilés has only made one film before, The Chambermaid, in which a lot happened without very much seeming to happen at all. The same thing is going on with Tótem, superficially an almost-fly-on-the-wall naturalistic drama tracking a family through the day leading up to the birthday party of Tono, a very sick husband, father and son, who will probably not see another birthday, it becomes apparent fairly early on.
Tono used to be the hottest guy in town, we later learn, but in glimpses of his body as he tries to hold himself upright to take a shower, he’s now a skeletal remnant of what used to be.
Without the horrorshow of this man’s impending death, and Tono’s herculean attempts to at least show up at the party and make believe it’s all OK for a second, this would be an entirely satisfying drama following a family no quirkier than any other and Avilés gives us plenty of moments of domestic normality. Grandad is pre-occupied with a bonsai and “talks” using an electronic voicebox, one aunt is dyeing her hair and getting her daughter to help her, another is candling her daughter’s ears.
There is food to cook, decorations to hang up and a party to organise, which means greeting other new arrivals, who are turning up in dribs and drabs for the party.
But most of the action is seen through the big expressive eyes of Sol, the sick man’s daughter, who wonders why she can’t see her dad (too sick), and mooches through the day preparing for the big event, at which she’ll deliver the party piece that is the making of the party and the standout moment of the film.
Avilés opens with a shot of a crow and some insects crawling across a surface, a typical horror movie opener, and ends with a shot hanging on Sol’s big wide eyes, another horror movie shot.
There’s also just the faintest suggestion, towards the end, delivered by Thomas Becka’s score, that something supernatural is going on. Between these bookends the warmest, most feelgood piece of feelbad you’re ever likely to witness, family life in all its funny ways, in a house full of arguments, games and cooking, as well as the business of tending the sick man while also talking in quiet voices about the treatment he might yet get or not get.
Avilés shoots it warm and loose, shallow of focus, handheld and with a less-than-widescreen aspect. It’s very intimate and feels entirely unscripted, the ensemble cast really earning their corn with a series of relaxed performances that don’t feel at all like performances.
It’s almost unfair to pick anyone out, though Naíma Sentíes, who plays Sol, carries the entire film and is, here and there, so spectacularly good that you want to stand up and applaud the screen. Mateo Garcia, as the sickly Tonatiuh (to give him his full name) is also impressive, never milking it in what is, for his character, essentially an extended death scene.
It’s light and deft, as Avilés also was in The Chambermaid (highly recommended), seemingly observing rather than commenting, though a critique of gender roles can be found in there if that warms your cockles, or can be entirely disregarded if it leaves you cold.
In case naturalism, a Mexican film in a foreign language and a tricky subject leaves you wondering if Avilés is in fact an arthouse director, where arthouse equals hard work, that’s not how it is at all. There are jokes, fun, a musical interlude, lots of drama high and low. Tótem is not exactly entertaining, not exactly enjoyable but it is entirely engrossing, so much so that its 95 minutes fly by in a “where the hell did the time go?”
Tótem – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
