Mexico City, early 2021: social inequalities exploded. The streets are burning up and a deaf violence is killing the city and its privileged. A revolution is committed against the richest 1%. The collateral victims are legion, before the army takes over to impose a « new order ». This week, Michel Franco presented his new dystopia to the BRIFF as a preview. His latest films Chronicle (2015) and Las Hijas de Abril (2017) had already been awarded in Cannes with the distinctions of the best scenario and the distinction of a certain look. Already noticed and rewarded with the Grand Prize of the jury at the Mostra in Venice, let's promise that this new production should meet a certain success at the festival thanks to its radical and ambivalent approach to the civil war. Attempted analysis before the French release, scheduled for December 2021.
You may kiss the flange!
Before the storm, New Order begins with a marriage in the very high Mexican society. Protected by a private agency, the residence is under high surveillance and the guards are on the lookout for any suspicious details. As the dean drains water from the tap, a greenish stream flows out of the sink. Immediately interpreted as a dark warning, the alert is given, even if the guests are not informed. The latter give to the party or business according to everyone's appetite, because weddings are also places to pour some pots of wine to their neighbor. Green, a symbol of hope, is the colour of the manifestations that hatch throughout the city centre. The news However, no one seems to be overly alerting. Undoubtedly another revolt in a country ravaged by corruption and violence, they think, probably too busy to feast and convinced of the immunity conferred on them by their social class.
After all, it is not said that Mexico is at an internal war with more 200,000 deaths Since 2006? Against the cartels that run with impunity and dispute the territory. Against a police force whose members are directly recruited among the traffickers, as the freezing documentary tells us very well El Sicario with the poignant testimony of a repentant man of hand. Against the politicians, who bathe in the complicity of the crimes committed against the revolters who insurrection, or, conversely, against those who mobilized and were eliminated in the last elections Legislative.
In reality, Mexico has long been at war, even before the dystopia that Michel Franco draws. The country is bathed in daily violence that saves no one. We remember the infamous 43 students commemorating the massacre of 1968 of their predecessors in Tlatelolco, themselves disappeared in turn, in broad daylight, in 2014, then found burned in a dump. Mexico is also one of the most dangerous countries For the press. Journalists are at risk of unimaginable abuse, as Mexican artist Sergio Gonzales Rodriguez himself, a victim of drug traffickers, has since lost his voice. About a corpse found in an industrial area in Iguala, The artist testified:
« His eye had been torn off, his skin had been torn off his face, and he died of a cranial fracture. Anamorphosis is the wild rebus that creates and reports the victim and victim: I will tear your eyes so that you will not see me, nor see what I have done with you, so that you yourself will not even see you at your last moment, nor understand what I am about to do to you. My anonymity is yours, I separate you from your face and I transform you into myself. »
This horror, which uses the body as an object of terror, and especially its motives are hardly suggested, although the scenes in prison are particularly chilling. Perhaps it is not the chosen angle to seek the sources of the evil that gnaws the country. The director prefers the engine of inequality of wealth, which is perhaps a pity given the more complex singularity of Mexican society and its turpitudes. If the scenes of torture and violence are present, its origin is diffuse. Nuevo Goldden countered this contemporary context with a bias: that of preferring the denunciation of violence whatever it may be, rather than being expressly interested in its ills set out above. Or perhaps Michel Franco simply wanted to approach the problem from the perspective of those privileged who, warm in their fortified residences, What happens to be disconnected from these subjects?
The director probably does not grow in human goodness and that is little to say. While Michel Franco does not appear in favour of the revolution during the exchange with the public, the chosen position is in the film, in particular because the only political and contemporary reference is that referring to the Zapatism. Indeed, some of the insurgents who will literally execute, torture and humiliate the famous 1% and assimilated are related to the movement, yet not inclined to the acts of bloody weapons. On the other hand, this Manichean vision, which leaves no room for hope, from the beginning to the end of the film, has the merit of generating a permanent tension, which from a narrative point of view is an integral success.
The purple wedding
From the beginning of the ceremony, one would think to see scenes of the Sponsor or even Parasite. On this aspect, the film is a frank success, because it immediately succeeds in generating a heavy climate, a sword of Damocles, which only asks to fall on these untouchables. The money sucks from the guests, from their attitude towards wealth, to their total disconnection from the concerns of the disadvantaged classes. A former family employee, Felipe, came to ask for help from his former bosses. His wife, Elisa, is at the point of death and requires a heart surgery costing 100,000 pesos, equivalent to just over 4,200 euros: a sum for the quidam, but a bagel for the rich family. Yet, after reminding Felipe that he had been out of work here for eight years, she will only collect part of the money. Rather than go to the family safe (whose access code she changes), the mother will collect the money from her guests as if nothing was happening.
The latter come out of the lilies of banknotes without browing, since here money flows. This kind of generosity will hit the sensitivity of the future bride, who will decide to obey herself and do what is necessary in front of the distress of the old clerk to reap the remaining amount. New Order manages to generate a curious feeling, since one manages to find humanity in these privileged ones, at least in some of them. The fate given to them is such that it would be difficult to react differently. In comparison, insurgents have no form of sensitivity or evidence of compassion. Their action is motivated by simple social revenge and once taboos fall, nothing can stop hatred.
Only the dead have seen the end of the war
New Order obeys at a steady pace with incisive plans and always a shot or a cry of distress that sounds out of the field to recall how much violence rages. The photograph is very successful, especially in the opening scene, which leaves in just a few seconds to see the abuse to follow with a busy aesthetic, almost in the image of the blood rain dEvil Dead of the Fede Alvarez, in green version this time. Finally the role of Marta and her son brings an interesting look at fidelity and its outcome. The feature film never falls into gratuitousness and the stifling atmosphere is before due to the lively narrative, which leaves no respite to the spectator.
By deliberately choosing to be a dystopia that ignores diversity, New Order perhaps lacks the opportunity to anchor even deeper in Mexico's atypical social context. However, what he loses in historical authenticity he gains in the evocative and deeply pessimistic power of the human soul. No doubt for Michel Franco, « Man is a wolf for Man ». A radical vision, which perhaps omits that revolutions are not only the result of ad hoc reversals. Wouldn't it be a long time before we really appreciate the effects? In addition to social gains, some will gladly prefer the term « conquered », a formula that is otherwise more relevant to the long-term struggles for a certain degree of freedom which is known to be ephemeral. However, and in order to abound this black vision of the director, is hope still permitted in a country where root poverty and victims become similar to torturers, such as the self-defence groups who, in the face of the state's bankruptcy, do justice themselves with procedures so close to cartels?
[...] realism without going into pure and hard dystopia as the very radical New Order did. This is because the hypothesis of a civil war is no longer so far-fetched as Civil War [...]
[...] Michel Franco, director of New Order (2020), exposes us to a flood of visceral violence, the theatre of a bloody insurrection [...]
[...] (the very recent Memory – an upsetting intimate drama – or the most acerbic and striking New Order blissfully exploring the notion of class struggle), Franco is also a producer [...]
...of course... Unfortunately, we are far from the impact of a film like New Order that we talked about in our critique of (no less brilliant) Heroico. And we will try [...]