FILM CHALLENGE: 181) We Are What We Are

181) We Are What We Are

Director: Jorge Michel Grau

Year: 2010

Plot Summary: When the matriarch of a family of cannibals dies, his three teenage children bare the responsibilities of looking after the family.

Mexico's answer to Let The Right One In, this is a bizarre yet thoroughly engrossing character drama disguised by the conventions of a horror movie.

Though it is unavoidably about cannibals, We Are What We Are is successful in its portrait of a family who have just lost their matriarch. Their debates over who should lead the family from now on and the conflict this causes with the mother who cannot let go makes for great drama while the need to continue their routine is mesmerising. These aspects also make it a surprisingly tender movie in between the moments of tension and gore.

It also provides a fascinating insight into life in Mexico by subtly touching on some of the country's politics. The opening scene in which their father dies in a shopping mall while those around him fail to care, only moving to take away his body and sweep up the blood, is a powerful image that represents their culture's lack of interest in death as its so common. Furthermore, the direction places much emphasis on the poverty that surrounds these cannibals, giving us a first-hand perspective of why it is like this.

The sub-plot involving the police investigation not only ties the narrative together but, moreover, is unique is presenting a portrait of police officers who couldn't care less about the cannibalism. It only becomes important to them when the prospect of fame is involved.

It's a shame that it won't get the recognition it deserves because We Are What We Are is tremendously original and fresh. Maybe it'll get an American remake called What We Are?

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with No comments