We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hey) + Happy Face reviews
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
There are many things families do together: some have picnics; others go to the zoo perhaps. But the brood in Jorge Michel Grau’s WE ARE WHAT WE ARE share a somewhat unusual hobby: they eat people. Their favourite pastime is thrown into jeopardy however when their father, the primary gatherer of fresh meat, keels over and dies in a strip-lit shopping mall. With Papa gone the family needs to appoint a new ‘hunter’. Sabina (Paulina Gaitan) thinks her jittery elder brother Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) fits the bill but her irascible younger brother Julian (Alan Chavez) and their seething harridan of a mother (Carmen Beato) have other plans.
Heavy on atmosphere and stylisation but light on exposition, the film at times recalls Claire Denis’ TROUBLE EVERY DAY. But where Denis’ film was a study of addiction and sexual desire Grau, like George Romero, (whose DAY OF THE DEAD is evoked in the film’s opening sequence) is more interested in using the horror conceit as a launching point for social commentary.
His prowling camera meanders through the backstreets of a Mexico City rife with poverty and deprivation detailing the squalor and destitution in long, contemplative shots. From the coterie of prostitutes the father apparently preyed on to the street urchins targeted by Alfredo, the family’s victims are even more desperate and downtrodden than they are.
A horror film not only with a heart but also with a mind WE ARE WHAT WE ARE shows us a brutal, impoverished society in which the inhabitants are quite literally forced to eat one another in order to survive.
Jason Goodyer
Heavy on atmosphere and stylisation but light on exposition, the film at times recalls Claire Denis’ TROUBLE EVERY DAY. But where Denis’ film was a study of addiction and sexual desire Grau, like George Romero, (whose DAY OF THE DEAD is evoked in the film’s opening sequence) is more interested in using the horror conceit as a launching point for social commentary.
His prowling camera meanders through the backstreets of a Mexico City rife with poverty and deprivation detailing the squalor and destitution in long, contemplative shots. From the coterie of prostitutes the father apparently preyed on to the street urchins targeted by Alfredo, the family’s victims are even more desperate and downtrodden than they are.
A horror film not only with a heart but also with a mind WE ARE WHAT WE ARE shows us a brutal, impoverished society in which the inhabitants are quite literally forced to eat one another in order to survive.
Jason Goodyer
Film details
We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hey) + Happy Face
Director: Jorge Michel Grau
Actor: Francisco Barreio
Actor: Alan Chavez
Actor: Paulina Gaitan
Actor: Francisco Barreio
Actor: Alan Chavez
Actor: Paulina Gaitan
Mexico, 2010.
105 mins. Spanish with English subtitles.
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