Critics reviews

Director Lorenzo Vigas, who collaborated on the script with Paula Markovitch and Laura Santullo, adeptly manoeuvres things so that the film slides effortlessly from mystery to criminal story to quasi-Greek tragedy, changing registers with subtle alterations of tone.

It’s a harrowing, daring film, ready to take on contemporary border politics and social justice issues in the familiar guise of a story that is, at its roots, as old as any.

Vigas tells his story simply and artfully. It is a heartbreaking, resonant coming-of-age film that will likely linger in your mind for a good, long time.

With The Box, Vigas delivers one of the darkest coming-of-age stories in the history of cinema.

The Box is not flawless, at times a little drab, but Vigas places his finger squarely on a vital matter.

[D]espite suffering from an instinct for the unsubtle, The Box is ultimately economical, and brilliantly simple in its premise, and distinguishes Vigas’s strength for ambitious but grounded social-realist drama amidst the density of Mexico’s aspiring auteurs.

“The Box” lacks the sort of ardor that made “From Afar” so memorable. Vigas here, not all the major beats amount to substantial commentary on this relationship or the context. However, there are choices and plot elements that confirm the director’s narrative sagacity.

Vigas coldly ponders a situation as if from afar himself, distanced from violence and murder as if they’re normal, everyday events, which instills a sense of chilly terror. As such, it’s a film much harder to get into than his previous work, where there were at least begrudging moments of authentic kindness providing respite.

[The Box] suggests that the moral vacuum at the heart of capitalist exploitation makes it indistinguishable from the drug trade... Sergio Armstrong’s camera captures the unrelenting grandeur of the country, hinting that the film is something of a western, creating a film at once handsome as it unfolds the ugliness being done.

[F]or his superb second narrative feature, Vigas shows no inclination to compromise: “The Box” may see him relocating to Mexico, but it’s otherwise wholly of a piece with his debut in its terse, cut-to-the-quick refinement, its loaded, exquisitely composed images, and its fixation on shifting, complex man-versus-boy dynamics.

La Caja – a tale of physical and spiritual deserts – may be too modest and stolid to trouble the scoreboard this year. But it has important things to say and by and large says them well.

An acutely observed chamber piece played out by two exceptionally well-cast actors who keep you guessing about the subtle shifts in their characters’ relationship, this is an unflinching account of human lives rendered disposable by greed and corruption.