Natalia López Gallardo's Robe of Gems is now showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries—including Brazil, Germany, Italy, India, and the Netherlands—starting February 20, 2023, in the series Festival Focus: Berlinale.
I have lived in the Mexican countryside for over fifteen years; it is a place to witness the progressive collapse of the social tissue and dream about falling heads. With two kids of my own, I have imagined, laterally through the mist, the daily lives of parents with murdered or missing children, which has awakened the darkest of sadnesses.
I spent a year talking to people around my village for Robe of Gems’s casting process. I met a family that had abducted a man and kept him in their house. But from afar, everything seemed normal. The father was devoted to his work as a taxi driver and loved his children. The kids continued to go to school, their mother worked hard at home. Life continued.
Their 16-year-old son flirted with the criminal world. But he also loved to dance and always helped his mother. As a family, they were generous with their neighbors, played football with the community, and attended parties. One quality came to mind: they were kind-hearted. But they needed money. Mexico is like a god with multiple faces and equally as many contradictions.
That is what this film is about. After years of exposure to infinite images of torture, something shifts in our minds and dreams. Maps of clandestine graves, missing people’s faces, homicides of men and women alike. The list goes on. But for every vivid form of violence, there is an invisible one: the spiritual wound and its psychological dimension. This is precisely what I want to evoke.
I think of Robe of Gems as a collage that reflects a universe where all the characters contribute—as victims or offenders—to the cycle of violence, without being aware. Through feelings of impotence, fear, and guilt, the main characters explore the unconscious implications of this reality.