Tremors

Pablo is the son of a wealthy religious family in Guatemala; married, two children, a good job. One day the family gathers because it has come out that he is involved with a man. The family treats this as an illness. The church steps in and a course of treatment is offered. His wife stops him seeing the children. He is dismissed from work. In the end he has nowhere to stay and agrees to enter the programme. Jayro Bustamante writes and directs. The film takes the social weight of the evangelical churches in Guatemala directly as its subject. The conversion programmes it shows are really practised, and the narrative gives their workings in detail. The harshest thing about it is the form of the violence. Nobody strikes Pablo; the pressure comes dressed as love, prayer and family concern, and that is enough to break him. Bustamante's films make up a set that takes on separate wounds of Guatemalan society; this is the second of them. The earthquake of the title is used concretely in the opening and then spreads across the whole narrative. The visual language is cold and ordered; the frames are symmetrical and the characters are often shot through doorways and along corridors. Who it is for: viewers who follow Latin American cinema and drama built on religious coercion. Who it is not for: it is without hope, the pace is slow, and the ending offers no rescue.