the tongue of the Sun

la lengua del sol

a film by José Luis Gutiérrez Arias, starring Flavia Atencio, Raul Mendez
Mexico 2017
(DVD with bad English subtitles available from HMV)

I am a sucker for the kind of chamber play that juxtaposes two humans in a room, like Room in Rome and En la cama, so here’s a third movie to compare these two with (or a fourth, if I include Now and Later). Like the earlier Chilean film En la cama, we have a hetero couple, but many other things reminded me of Julio Medem’s Room in Rome (if only because I’ve watched that one more often than the Chilean film).

The story is an entirely different one, as our Mexican characters face the end of the world (apparently expected to come from a ginormous solar protuberance, hence the title of the movie), but the elements shared with Medem’s film include the interlude of a third person knocking on the door, dramatic scenes in the bathroom, attempts at singing (more successful in Rome), and a similar tragedy in the backstory of one of the characters, as well as various gaps in what biographical information they are prepared to share.

On the end of the world side of things I appreciated the light-heartedness with which the protagonists (most of the time) make the most of the time that remains. Not having a future can liberate you of worries – even though the element of fear is also expressed. As our civilisation seems to be hell bent on self destruction, I am sometimes feeling that lightness too – doesn’t matter too much what we eff up now, as everything is effed up wholesale and for the next few centuries anyhow. The slightly esoteric plan they're hatching in the last part of the film reminded me of the famous aphorism the German science writer Hoimar von Ditfurth (1921-1989) used for a book title, which goes along the lines of "if I knew the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a little apple tree today."

All in all it's a very lovely and charming little film, which I'll happily watch again once I've had a chance to revisit En la cama and Now and Later. The question remains how this obscure Mexican no-budget film from 2017 ended up on the UK high streets in 2020 even though, of course, it hadn’t been released in UK cinemas. My theory is that some marketing genius realised that in a way it is about people in lockdown, so very timely for 2020. Which would also explain why after we left the lockdowns behind, the DVD is now sold for next to nothing.

HMV