YARDS OF GRAPEVINE | Movies, TV, Oscars & S'more

An austere tone piece about the numbing effects of grief and the harm of childhood bullying, After Lucia paints a nightmarish portrait of contemporary Mexico City. The ‘Lucia’ of the title relates to the passing of a woman who’s survived by a lonely husband, Jose, and his daughter, Alejandra. As you might expect, the story tells the tale of these two struggling to orient to life without someone they love. The title would suggest a film about the grieving process and initially that’s precisely what we get. Then the film takes an unexpected turn into torturous hate crimes that relate to its main theme in tenuous ways.

These types of tales tend to be spiritual investigations about the process of moving on and learning to love again. After Lucia, Mexico’s submission for the Academy Awards, instead argues that human behavior operates only on the function of peer pressure and individual whims. The picture remains grounded in the present, forced forward by simmering anger – Jose struggles to hold down a job – and the confusion of childhood. After Lucia deals with a contemporary world where parents and children alike can remain separate but tethered to the technology of cell phones and computers. Director Michel Franco’s distanced, icy style (reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s recent Indie projects) portrays people who can function with each other without actually being connected. In many ways, After Lucia’s primarily about the damaging effects of an indifferent, technologically-advanced world.

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