WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Written & Directed by Jorge Michel Grau
Produced by Nicolás Celis
Released by IFC Midnight
Spanish with English subtitles
Mexico. 74 min. Not Rated
With Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitán, Carmen Beato, Jorge Zárate & Esteban Soberánes
 

I’ll have to tell you outright—I was prepared to dislike the Mexican indie horror film We Are What We Are. The press notes included an artist’s statement by writer-director Jorge Michel Grau, a barely literate pile of guff that hit several fashionable notes without making a lick of sense. I was expecting the product of a humorless poser, his mind addled by some cultural theory nonsense poured into his skull at his film school in Barcelona. But We Are What We Are is, in fact, one of the best movies of the new year and the debut of a talent to watch.

WAWA follows a family living in a Mexico City slum. We meet them at a moment of crisis. The father has just died unexpectedly while ogling female mannequins at the mall. His death cracks the mother (Carmen Beato), a plain, hard-faced woman, made of angles and a very short fuse, who refuses to leave her room. The family’s two brothers then lose their watch repair stand at a local market, which had provided them with their slim livelihood. But more pressing is—how will they get their next meal? The family is, for reasons wisely never explained, a clan of cannibals, devoted to obscene dark rituals, who must eat human flesh in order to survive.

The role of provider most plausibly lands on Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro), the eldest brother and a quiet, sensitive boy, best suited to planning the killings. He’s favored by Sabina (an excellent Paulina Gaitán), his wise and eerily sensual sister slinking about their crumbling house. But Alfredo has to contend with their formidable mother. In her despair, she’s content to see the family starve rather than master her grief or accept anyone else’s authority. And Alfredo also has to manage his hotheaded younger brother, Julián (Alan Chávez), whose violent temper threatens to sabotage their hunts. The two brothers are also, it’s hinted, rivals for the sister’s possibly incestuous affections.

The film plays out with a sordid matter-of-factness, and its commitment to believability extends to the boys’ targets. Like all predators, they go after the easiest prey. And in their world, this means street kids, homosexuals, and prostitutes. The choice of victims gives a subtle political texture to the crimes. The mother hates prostitutes (apparently, dad had a thing for them), which leads to some complications—and the first real clue for two cynical policemen who are, grudgingly, on their trail.

We Are What We Are is to movies like The Hills Have Eyes what Let the Right One In is to Dracula. Like the 2009 Swedish vampire flick, it’s a clever exercise in naturalistic horror that updates genre tropes to make them fresh again. It does this with an almost serene detachment from the events that unfold, somewhat gaining your sympathy for the family mostly by virtue of their having the most screen time. It doesn’t entirely neglect their victims though, and a vengeful posse of streetwalkers and drag queens is one of the film’s funniest and best creations.

But even films this good rarely hold together all the way through. Its last act is the one major disappointment, when the movie’s core strength—its credibility—unravels in a couple of implausible decisions and a final, noisy shootout. Brendon Nafziger
February 18, 2011