This feature film debut continues the breathing of new air of Mexican independent production in the last few years, although it can also be placed in a certain tradition of that country’s cinema due to the being-locked-in topic, recurrent in films such as Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) and many works by Arturo Ripstein. Based on true events and starring the person who lived the experience, Parque Vía could have turned into the multiplication of discourses from the yellow press, but as in Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo, its skillful gaze makes the film transcend those prosaic origins without betraying them. The story follows Beto, who’s been in charge of taking care of an upper-class house for the last ten years, and subtly traces contemporary social conflicts with a very peculiar representation of how capitalism builds jailhouses on the most unimaginable places. And although the story could at times be related to a recent minimal narrative tendency of distanced observation, the aesthetic and sentimental compromise sustained by Enrique Rivero’s eye on detail is a good example of a maximalist cinema, which could extend a global view on the world from a microscopic plot. –bafici
