Dir. Diego Luna , Mexico , 2010, 82 mins, in Spanish with subtitles
Cast: Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, Karina Gidi, Gerardo Ruiz-Esparza,
Review by Carol Allen
Diego Luna made his international mark as an actor as one of the duo of sexually curious teenage boys in “Y Tu Mama Tambien”, He makes a very creditable feature film directorial debut here with this touching and unusual little film, which examines family life and attitudes in a particularly Mexican context.
Abel of the title is a 9 year old boy, whose father has abandoned the family to go and work in the United States , leaving Abel’s mother Cecilia (Gidi) to provide for their three children alone. As a result of his father’s desertion, Abel has become seriously disturbed. He doesn’t speak and has spent a long time in a local adult psychiatric ward. Now he must be transferred permanently to a residential children’s hospital in far off Mexico City . Cecilia persuades the doctor, who has a bit of a soft spot for her, to let her son come home first, arguing that the presence of his two siblings might improve his condition. Her hope is that this might cure him and he will be able to stay with them indefinitely. After a few days of family tension, Abel begins to speak again but not as a 9 year old boy. He adopts the role of the absent father of the family, acting protectively towards his mother as though he were her husband and bossing his siblings about with sometimes comic results. The family though humour him and things start to settle down, until Abel’s father Anselmo (José María Yazpik) unexpectedly returns and precipitates a crisis, which results in near tragedy.
Central to making the film work is the casting of Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, a young boy who has never acted before, as Abel. Luna has found the perfect actor for the role and drawn a totally convincing performance from him. Abel’s relationship with his younger brother Paul, played by Christopher’s real life sibling Gerardo, who at first rejects the brother he hasn’t seen for two years but then readily accepts him as a father figure, helps to add to this conviction. The climax of the film, when the two boys run off together, is suitably tense and disturbing and the overall mixture of gentle comedy and unease is very effective.
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