Totem (2023)
TotemMovie on Netflix
”A little girl helps prepare a surprise party for her sick father, but chaos fractures the family's foundations.”
Available at home
Subscription
Trailer
Why watch this film?
When it comes to personal grief, Mexican cinema has the tendency (or the vice, it would be more accurate to say) to lean too heavily towards exaggerated melodrama or, alternatively, towards the most mediocre miserabilism. With Totem (nominated at both the Spirit and Gotham Awards, and awarded at the Morelia Film Festival for both this film and its predecessor, La camarista) Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés reminds us that there is another path: one of understanding, accepting, and feeling. That is precisely what she invites us to do through the story of Sol (Naíma Sentíes), a young girl who gathers with her family to celebrate her father's (Mateo García) birthday, although he’s too ill to attend his own party. With great scriptwriting skill and a camera both furtive and complicit, Avilés' gaze infiltrates the bittersweet intimacy of a family united by imminent pain, gradually revealing, with compassion, the ways in which each person faces it.
Lalo Ortega
Assistant Editor at Filmelier
Plot summary
Seven-year-old Sol spends the day at her grandfather's home, helping with the preparations for a surprise party for her father. Throughout the day, chaos slowly takes over, fracturing the family's foundations. Sol will embrace the essence of letting go as a release for existence.
To share
Do you want to watch something different?
Watch full movies now!
Press play and be surprised!
Where to watch?
Available at home
From the same director
Eye Two Times Mouth
New installment in the series of short films Women's Tales from the Miu Miu brand, which highlights great directors from the world scene. In this case it is the turn of the Mexican Lila Avilés, widely recognized for the film The Camarista. In Eye Two Times Mouth we meet the story of Luz, a woman who works in a gallery but who pursues her true passion when she auditions to sing opera in Madame Butterfly. You don't have to be an opera connoisseur to enjoy the short: Avilés makes a beautiful juxtaposition between the protagonist's everyday life and her work to become an artist, which gives rise to thoughts about the love we dedicate to our art.
The Chambermaid
There is, in Mexican cinema, a very marked tendency towards exploitation and miserabilism - the so-called pornomiseria - when it comes to exploring issues of social class and economic inequality. 'La camarista', the debut of filmmaker Lila Avilés awarded at the Morelia Festival and winner of the Ariel for Best First Feature, stands out for avoiding these vices and proposing an incisive comment on these issues. The plot follows a young chambermaid, Eve (Gabriela Cartol), who works long and hard days in one of the most exclusive hotels in Mexico City, at the expense of taking care of her son. During her routine she rubs shoulders with colleagues, guests clearly more privileged - and ignorant of her situation - than she is, and studies with the aim of getting a better job to give her family a better life. 'La camarista' is a discreet but powerful portrait of loneliness, determination and crushing social inequality that is lived in Mexico, overflowing with a raging irony under its calculated and meticulous form.
Drama
Raspberries with Mustard
Meeri Ehrlich, 13 years old has three problems. First: She is in love - with the wrong person - and has butterflies in her tummy. Second: Her mother passed away and she misses her a lot. Third: her father - owner of a funeral home - is looking for a new partner. But Meeri has something that is only hers, something very special - she can fly.
Underdog
In its effort to raise awareness about the precarious social reality of certain sectors of the population, Mexican cinema tends to fall into miserabilism (or so-called "poverty porn"), whether in documentaries or fiction. The quest of Mexican cinema for new creative and narrative horizons is ongoing, and in the case of Underdog (Correr para vivir), director and co-writer Gerardo Dorantes opts for what, in its conventions, is an action and crime thriller extrapolated to the context of the Rarámuri (or Tarahumara) indigenous people of northern Mexico, famous for their running tradition (and their extraordinary talent for it). The plot follows two brothers: Omero (Vladimir Rivera), who dreams of being a runner; and Capó (Manuel Cruz Vivas), who is more talented but also troubled. Both are dragged into a life of service to the drug trade when Capó, in an attempt to provide for his pregnant girlfriend, fails in a cocaine delivery. To be honest, it's a good attempt to steer Mexican cinema towards other directions that are not the typical exploitation of social dramas or anthropological documentaries. However, the film ends up falling into the same vices, representing Rarámuri culture from a superficial and idealized exoticism, creating entertainment from a real social context with little sensitivity.
Downtown Owl
'Downtown Owl' - Searching for a break from her cosmopolitan life in Milwaukee, Julia Rabia (Lily Rabe), arrives in the closeknit Reagan-era town of Owl, North Dakota for a one-semester high school teaching job. But when the small town turns out to be a wonderland of second-string poets, smoldering Marlboro Men, and a social hierarchy that echoes high school, Julia doesn't know if she's come to town to get away from home or to find it. Ed Harris, Vanessa Hudgens, Henry Golding, and Finn Wittrock also star in this Great Plains dark dramedy directed by Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater. Based on the novel by Chuck Klosterman.
Baby
After his release from a juvenile center, Wellington finds himself homeless in São Paulo. At a porn theater, he meets Ronaldo, who mentors him in street survival. Their bond evolves into a turbulent affair.
