VENICE 2020: New Order
venice 2020Mexican cinema nowadays has evolved a lot and a new wave of ambitious young directors are trying to leave their mark in the industry. Not the Three Amigos, whose movies have abandoned their own Mexican roots to find success in Hollywood (Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma might be the only exception). Young directors such as Gerardo Naranjo (Miss Bala), Amat Escalante (Heli) and Michel Franco (After Lucía) have developed a style of filmmaking that wants to shock the audience with some kind of ironic twist, and Nuevo Orden is no exception.
Michel Franco, whose last three movies have won different prizes in Cannes, has once again delivered a feature that will divide the audience. But what is Nuevo Orden really about? From the initial premise, the picture might resemble Parasite, as it focuses on a bourgeois family whose house gets invaded by a group of “guests”. However, Franco’s new movie doesn’t want to show a stark difference between the poor and rich classes like the Korean masterpiece but rather create an oppressive atmosphere where everything can happen to anyone and explore the impact of violence and protests in a specific situation. Nuevo Orden is set in a dystopian future that is not far from nowadays and depicts a world where disorder reigns supreme and it’s manipulated by a government that takes advantage of this chaotic and conflicted climate. The movie opens with a brilliant sequence where horrifying images are shown and all have in common one thing, the color green, symbol of the protesters representing freedom. The concatenation of these images creates a sense of confusion and disorder in the viewer that works effectively in the contest of the movie and anticipates the madness that will follow it.
Clocking in just under 90 minutes, Michel Franco delivers his most ambitious and bold movie; the pace and the editing are masterfully done by the Mexican director, as he was able to mix shocking and intense sequences with “quieter” ones and let the audience catch their breath before another violent scene. Franco’s direction has always kept the viewer at arm’s lenght from their characters, and it didn’t always work for the talented filmmaker, especially in April’s Daughter, where this detached approach was not suited for the family dynamics of the movie. In Nuevo Order though the empathy can be felt through its characters thanks to their respective performers. The whole cast is great in this ensemble structure; Naian González Norvind and Fernando Cuautle are the standouts as they represents the heart and the most genuine part of the movie. The former’s reactionary work is terrific as the actress conveyed all the horror her character was going through just by the expression of her eyes. While the latter gives a more subdued performance that represents a point of connection between the different social classes and the protest that’s going on.
All in all, Nuevo Orden feels like an alarm for our society as Franco already stated; on the verge of the Black Lives Matter and the Gilet Jaunes movements, but also the conflicts in South America, this movie shows how an ineffective and opportunist government can gain profit from those situations. This ambitious movie won’t be for anyone and the controversial nature of this opus will be polarising, but Nuevo Orden should elevate Michel Franco (and rightfully so), as one of the most interesting filmmaker of his generation.