April's Daughters

Michel Franco's film is set in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. Valeria is seventeen and pregnant and does not want her mother to know; Abril, played by Emma Suárez, has been absent for years. When the news reaches her she comes anyway, helps, puts things in order, and then takes over every part of her daughter's life one item at a time. The tension comes from the film withholding, for a long stretch, what Abril is actually doing. Each of her actions is reasonable on its own; the sum is a catastrophe. Franco keeps the camera at a distance that offers no comment and refuses to tell the audience who is right. Ana Valeria Becerril, as Valeria, does the film's hardest work: remaining someone with no power at all. Emma Suárez's performance is the spine of it, playing motherhood and hunger without ever letting the difference show. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2017 and won that section's Jury Prize. Who it is for: viewers who value cold, distanced Mexican cinema and uncomfortable family drama. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for a moral conclusion or for justice, which the film does not supply.