Opiniões dos críticos

There's an embarrassment of riches on offer in Alonso Ruizpalacios' staggeringly accomplished debut feature, Güeros, a Loony Tunes-level irreverent sightseeing tour of Mexico City whose apparent overtures towards a certain type of arty, indie cinema are delivered with tongue lodged in cheek.

All of this might be off-puttingly studenty and self-conscious, were it not for a supple, inventive surrounding narrative and a quartet of lead performances that buzz with sincerity and energy. Güeros plays narrative tricks – not least with a dynamic opening that gestures towards a different sort of film entirely, only to be abandoned wholesale when the real protagonist happens along – but still feels sensitive and intelligent rather than self-satisfied.

Right off the bat, Alonso Ruizpalacios' "Güeros" captures three superlatives from this reviewer: Best debut feature I've seen in the last year, best Mexican film in recent memory, and best (black and white) cinematography since Pawel Pawlikowski's equally stunning but very different "Ida.

Why make revolution when you've got a set of wheels, and, like Tomás, a camera to play with? The world is too variously beautiful. The soixante-huitards mostly let us down. But if this promising director continues taking his cues from Godard, it's possible he'll find himself committed to something other than indecision.

A faint breeze of a story about finding a singer from the '60s connects the film with its obvious New Wave influences, as does the freewheeling, black-and-white camerawork. Director Alonso Ruizpalacios has fun with moments like the actors breaking character to discuss whether the screenplay's any good. Agreeable this film certainly is, but the shagginess never seems to take shape.

Alonso Ruiz Palacios' lovely and sublime Güeros is far less demanding [than Navajazo] yet equally invested in the psychological malaise of the everyday Mexican citizen... Palacios' deadpan compositions and slyly resonant pacing remind of another fascinating Mexican filmmaker, Fernando Eimbcke (Lake Tahoe, Club Sandwich).

Güeros impressed against my suspicion that it might be show-offish... As self-aware black-and-white, nouvelle-vague-tribute fever dreams go, Güeros is surprisingly beautiful, inventive and convincing.

The cinematography amplifies the intensity of every setting and encounter, with Damian Garcia frequently zooming in close on an expressive face or blurring the edges of an image, as if shooting with a pinhole camera, to focus our attention. At times the filmmakers home in on something with hallucinatory clarity (a captivity-crazed tiger in the zoo, a dense snowfall of feathers imagined inside the car by a panicked Frede), and the image is held just long enough to imprint it on our inner eye.