Lost in the Night

The Mexican provocateur Amat Escalante dishes up a mystery-thriller that will not enhance his reputation.

The strangest thing about this film set in Central Mexico is the fact that its director, Amat Escalante, wrote it and did so in collaboration with his brother Martín. That fact rules out the possibility that the director had taken on this project just to get back to filming for the cinema following a seven-year break. But, in spite of that, the impression given by Lost in the Night is that of a film which should have felt urgent and thrilling but which plays out in an almost languid tone as though the director for all his technical skills never felt the heat in the story.

It would seem that the aim was to offer us a suspenseful tale (some have indeed described Lost in the Night as a thriller) but also to create a work of social comment. As regards the latter element, although for most people references to the disappeared in South America will bring to mind actions by oppressive regimes in Chile and Argentina, Mexico has not escaped this menace. Indeed, Escalante’s film was inspired by what occurred in Mexico in 2014. That was when forty-three student activists disappeared following arrest by the police. Creating a fiction based on that, Escalante’s film opens before the title appears on the screen. It does so by showing us an incident in which Paloma Flores (Vicky Araico), an activist protesting against a proposed mining development detrimental to its workers, is targeted and then eliminated. Following that preface the film resumes three years later and the principal character who now emerges is Paloma’s son Emiliano (Juan Daniel García Treviño). While his activist aunt is concerned with such disappearances in a general way, this young man’s actions are more personal and more direct. He is determined to discover exactly what happened to his mother by tracking down those responsible and, if possible, finding her body. In this conviction, he is tipped off by a dying policeman, a man with a conscience, who points him to the Aldama family.

Carmen Aldama (Bárbara Mori) is a successful singer who lives in style with her partner Rigoberto (Fernando Bonilla) who is a modern artist, his work being of the kind that seeks to shock. Another adult living with them is Mónica (Ester Expósito), Carmen’s daughter from an earlier marriage. Emiliano is caught checking out their property with his girlfriend Jazmin (Mafer Osio) but is able to persuade Rigoberto that he is looking for work and is taken on by him as a handyman. The fact that poor Emiliano in this way plants his foot in the residence of this rich family carries a distant echo of the masterly South Korean film Parasite (2019) but that only serves to emphasise how uninvolving Lost in the Night is by comparison. Amat Escalante, whose controversial award winner Heli made his name in 2013, does incorporate a strong sex scene between Emiliano and Jazmin not entirely out of keeping with the reputation that film established but, that aside, this new film seems oddly underpowered. As Emiliano pokes around for evidence, there is little real suspense. It seems likely that Rigoberto is hand in glove with the police chief Ruben (Jero Medina) while, if so, Carmen may or may not be complicit too, but it is difficult to care much. Emiliano describes the family as crazy but still succumbs to the flirtatious Mónica leaving it uncertain how sincere he is in his supposed love for Jazmin. That hardly makes him an engaging hero and his investigations yield so little that the focus is more on the extent to which Rigoberto, aware or not of his motives, seems to warm to him. As though to buck things up a bit, Rigoberto's art work has angered a religious cult known as the Aluxes who are threatening violent retaliation but none of this comes to much.

If for the greater part of its over-lengthy running time Lost in the Night drifts on rather unmemorably, its last third leads to an actionful climax. But, far from this rescuing the film from its relative stupor, what is offered is over-the-top action more characteristic of a standard adventure film than a drama intended to reflect anything in real life. That is bad enough, but the final scenes of all shot with touches of stylised slow-motion are just plain ludicrous. The cast do what they can but are powerless to save a film which, whether viewed as a personal drama or as social comment, falls far short of the kind of impact that one might reasonably have expected.

Original title: Perdidos en la Noche.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Juan Daniel García Treviño, Ester Expósito, Bárbara Mori, Fernando Bonilla, Mafer Osio, Jero Medina, Vicky Araico, Mayra Hermosillo.

Dir Amat Escalante, Pro Nicolás Celis, Fernanda de la Peza and Amat Escalante, Screenplay Amat Escalante and Martín Escalante with Paulina Mendoza, Ph Adrian Durazo, Pro Des Daniela Schneider, Ed Fernanda de la Peza, Costumes Ursula Schneider and Lucia del Mar Suárez del Real.

Pimienta Films/Tres Tunas/Cárcava Cine/Match Factory Productions/Snowglobe Films/Bord Cadre Films/ Sovereign Films-Sovereign Film Distribution.
122 mins. Mexico/Netherlands/Germany/Denmark. 2023. UK Rel: 24 November 2023. Cert. 18.