Aquí y Allá... Or inbetween by Antonio Méndez Esparza

In 2007, the Mexican population in the US reached 12 millions. But between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million of them went back to Mexico, according to data from the two countries. These massive migrations and returns are a huge social phenomenon in Mexico and generate lot of tensions, countless individual tragedies that cannot be ignored. Aquí y Allá deals with this issue. Pedro Hernández Santos plays a character quite similar to himself, though it’s not necessary for the spectator to know what is real and what is pure fiction. Pedro is back home in Guerrero, after several years working in the United States. Very fond of music, he wishes to create a band and to find his role back in his family. Everything is to be rediscovered, and the many long static shots look like necessary statements. This way, Antonio Méndez Esparza gives time to the spectator – and to Pedro as well - to take his marks and to become familiar with his daily life in Guerrero. A life that is not romanticised in any way. Esparza doesn’t want his aesthetic to burden the story and he sticks to a very natural (though clean and mastered) rendering of light and sound. It doesn’t matter if sometimes the daughters burble a bit too much or if the kitchen’s light is not flattering: it simply feels truthful. The need to escape is always there, in every word, in every character, and it slowly contaminates the viewer’s mind when things get a bit more tragic. Pedro’s newborn gets really sick, the medicine is awfully difficult to find… How could we not make the comparison with the US where it would be a lot easier to save a child’s life? Antonio Méndez Esparza’s great achievement consists in never making this reasoning explicit. He doesn’t go for melodrama, he just tells the facts in a quasi-objective way and this is why the movie is so powerful and moving; nobody complains, nobody moans, nobody laments the gap with the States. Furthermore, there are no images of the US, we only hear about Pedro’s life there in his tales, or through other people’s expectations and ghosts. The United States may be the most important character of the movie, deeply stamped as a watermark. The ghost of a past life back there makes Pedro a strange character, eternally aside, as if he remained stuck in this non-place that is the border. Like his child that may pass away as soon as he is born, Pedro is struggling to finally belong somewhere. Antonio Méndez Esparza brings a voice to this common tragedy of Mexican workers in a very brilliant, sensitive and clever way that cannot leave you indifferent.

by Chloé Vollmer-Lo