Pity Bernal wasn’t on hand for a post-film Q&A (seems the Y Tu Mama Tambien, Motorcycle Diaries and Science of Sleep star is attending a wedding in Spain this weekend), as Deficit is a film worth discussing—and rewatching—at length.
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- Deficit
- ***1/2
- Cesar Braga, Fernanda Castillo, Luz Cipriota, Dagoberto Gama, Gael Garcia Bernal, Malcolm Llanas
- Directed by Gael Garcia Bernal
- Plays again June 17 at 6 p.m.
The first-time director and co-executive producer plays Cristobal, a gallivanting rich kid whose privileged world crumbles over the course of an afternoon spent at his parents’ compound of a home. While his nonplussed mother and deceitful father deal with legal and financial issues by disappearing abroad, Cristobal and his wayward sister Elisa (Camila Sodi) try to brush aside worries of the house’s mounting disrepair and unpaid staff by inviting their respective friends over for a day of barbecuing, swimming and getting drunk. Complicating matters is the arrival of Argentine transplant Dolores (Cipriota) and the presence of Adan (Tenoch Huerta), a local who grew up with Cristobal but whose station in life now relegates him to yard work and cleaning the pool.
Shooting in a single location with a tight-focus Steadicam, Bernal captures with warts-and-all intimacy Cristobal’s slow descent into despair, but this is no mere character portrait. Within a plot that’s both simple and revealing, there’s also adequate room for an examination of how class wars wage not just in the street, but also in the backyard. Friendships are strained, drugs consumed, tears shed and lessons learned, but Deficit avoids becoming a teen-centric, perils-of-partying narrative. It’s ultimately not Cristobal’s current yuppie chums but the former friend on the periphery of the main action with whom deeper questions remain unanswered.
Bernal reveals much through such a small story and subtle clues—brief phone calls, magazine clippings, artwork, the thudding of distant bombs—as well as his own nuanced acting. Prior to the film, CineVegas Artistic Director Trevor Groth praised the Mexican star as “truly one of the finest actors, I think, in the world.” With this La Proxima Ola contender from Bernal and Canana, his production-distribution company with Y Tu Mama Tambien co-star Diego Luna, he shows tremendous promise as a fine international filmmaker as well.
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