Reseñas de la crítica

While characters can seem awkward in how they portray emotions in certain situations, it is its earnest storytelling that opens the world's perspective. Just as María's power is in her restraint, so is the film's—perceptive and raw, with a strength that needs few words

Made with actual Maya farmers in the Guatemalan highlands, this luminous first feature from Jayro Bustamante has scenes of such tactile intimacy that the trust between the director and his mostly nonprofessional cast is unmistakable. Colors are rich and deep (the gorgeous wide-screen cinematography is by Luis Armando Arteaga), and the atmosphere is so tranquil that the whoosh of action in the final third is powerfully disorienting.

Bustamante accompanies this abrupt shift from the country to the city with an equally abrupt formal shift, going jagged and handheld after nearly an hour of expertly composed shots in dreamy soft focus. Telón's performance as María's mother turns ferocious (in part because Juana blames herself for disseminating cultural nonsense), and the film, which had seemed simplistic for a long time, reveals itself as patiently corrosive. All in all, this is an impressive debut.

The film can sometimes feel too self-aware in its construction of an overtly airtight narrative. But that stifling structure is filled with gorgeous imagery and nuanced symbolism, which suggests an identificatory link between Maria and everything around her. Throughout, it's as if the jungle were a hall of mirrors. The girl feels like the volcano, stuck into place yet scorching inside.

Jayro Bustamante's Ixcanul was a genuine discovery, as this is not only the director's first feature, but also the first film made in the Kaqchikel Mayan language, with Mayan performers, about the Mayan community in Guatemala by somebody who grew up in the area... Bustamante makes us share his indignation, but also the beauty of the rituals surrounding the mourning for the missing baby, and, eventually, the lack of harsh moral standards in the community.

Some of that setup may feel familiar, but Bustamante's formal choices in Ixcanul—especially in pacing, with a rhythm that builds from take to take—allows for the story to play out to its most affecting measure. From beginning to end, both María's presence and distance is felt, as she struggles to assert herself and express her inner life.

The film's most powerful scenes show the closeness of mother and daughter, building up to Maria's desperate ploy to save her family's home... Stunning cinematography, carefully honed scenes of Mayan customs and an occasional touch of fancy animate this drama that, similarly to Land and Shade, or to A Monster with a Thousand Heads, explores how the destitute are ruthlessly rid of their rights.

Taking place in a village at the base of its titular Guatemalan volcano, Ixcanul abounds in potentially overwrought symbolism, only to shrug away the fantastical at every turn with its meretriciousness of blocking and performance, and invaluable semi-improvised contributions from its nonprofessional cast.

Ixcanul eludes the kind of drama that ceremoniously, if all too inevitably, attends the bucolic strands of narrative suggested by Bustamante's chosen milieu, instead opting for a more earthy but no less exigent denouement that grounds tragedy in nature's cyclical progression. In retrospect, the ritual bathing of mother and daughter assumes a near religious dimension, hinting at the film's non-didactic agenda of yielding to, more than making use of, its all-too-real subjects.

Cynicism aside, Ixcanul Volcano is actually quite remarkable, unpretentious in its direction and measured in its bearing.

A powerful and highly accomplished debut deserving recognition.

[The] use of indigenous language was the best thing about the Guatemalan competition film, Ixcanul Volcano, whose primarily spoken language is a local dialect, Kaqchikel, I had never heard, and in fact sounded to my ears almost like Arabic. It's not unusual to encounter something you haven't seen in the movies, but to hear something unique was a remarkably fresh experience and carried me through an otherwise average film.