Noches Solitarias

A young Mexican filmmaker's debut feature arrives carrying the full weight of its premise: a wealthy 18-year-old and a homeless woman find each other on the streets of Mexico City, and the audience is invited to contemplate what this means. Julián Acosta Vera, born in the year 2000 and therefore technically a person of the 21st century, has made a film that is primarily interested in desire and vulnerability rather than in making sure we have understood the correct lesson about inequality. This is, by current standards, a notable act of restraint.

The class dynamics are present and accounted for. Andrés has money; Lorena does not. The film acknowledges this gap with the frequency appropriate to a story where it is, in fact, the entire point. Critics have noted that the film presents "interesting contrasts between wealth and survival without digging as deep as it could," which is the polite critical way of saying the film had the good sense to be a romance instead of a sociology lecture. Alex Ortiz and Aketzaly Verástegui bring enough vulnerability to their performances that the social scaffolding recedes, leaving two people in a city at night, which is what the title promised.

The film's social consciousness is of the old-fashioned romantic variety: the idea that human connection does not respect economic categories. This is a theme as old as literature itself, predating the specific cultural moment that would have required Andrés to also be questioning his relationship with capital on a structural level. Luna Cine has produced a film that uses class as texture rather than as argument. We have seen worse choices made.