The question most often asked by Mexican movie-goers in the summer of 2000 was: “Have you seen Amores Perros?” Audiences were awed and startled by the intersecting stories of lust and loss set against Mexico City’s bleak landscape. The film ran at a breathtaking pace, with elliptical storytelling, edgy editing and sustained violence. It felt true to life in the world’s largest city, yet unusually stylish.
Amores Perros marked the directorial debut of the former radio DJ and television ad-man Alejandro Gonzalez Ionarritu. The script was by a young novelist, Guillermo Arriaga. Its ensemble of talented actors included the now-ubiquitous Gael Garcia Bernal. It was an explosive combination: Gonzalez Ionarritu’s commercial acumen, Arriaga’s complex storytelling, Rodrigo Prieto’s saturated pop-video photography and Garcia Bernal’s screen presence. At the Academy Awards it was nominated for best foreign language film.
The following year saw the release of a quirky road-movie, Y Tu Mama Tambien, a low-key story of two teenagers whose friendship is tested while driving towards a secluded beach in the company of an older, attractive woman.
Also starring Garcia Bernal, the film was directed by Alfonso Cuaron and shot by Emmanuel Lubezki - the latter two both Mexicans who had worked on big Hollywood projects such as the 1998 remake of Great Expectations. In Mexico, Y Tu Mama Tambien broke box-office records. It was tipped for an Oscar (original screenplay) and two Bafta awards.
To film aficionados, this looked like the early stirrings of a new movement in Mexican filmmaking - taboo-breaking and formally daring. Mexican audiences - typically middle-class urbanites - were finally being treated to films that reflected their experiences, and to characters they could relate to. This was not Hollywood’s postcard version of Mexico (exotic paradise, lawless border towns), nor did it dwell on the anthropological approach. Critics dubbed this renaissance the buena onda (good wave).
Those expecting a swell of high-octane Mexican films after 2001 may wonder if that buena onda was a ripple rather than a wave. To answer this, the Mexican Cinema Now season at London’s National Film Theatre has been screening a clutch of films released since Y Tu Mama Tambien.
As can be expected of any country’s film production, variety is the most obvious trait among recent Mexican films, which exhibit the full range from US-style teenage comedies (Duck Season, 2004), to realist dramas of village life (The Violin, 2006), and grimly existential art-house meditations (Japon, 2002).
So various are the movies emerging from Mexico that it is difficult to argue the existence of anything resembling a wave at all. Perhaps, says Jason Wood, author of The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema, the fault lies with the media, “ever eager to pinpoint a new trend”. That tag, director Cuaron adds, disregards Mexican filmmakers who have been active for the past 40 years: “There have been lots of Mexican film directors, but that doesn’t make a ‘wave’ - it’s not as if we have all shared a particular aesthetic.”
Nor is there anything very new about the movement. Mexico’s film industry goes back to the early 1930s, and the 1950s are generally considered its golden age. By the 1970s and 1980s, despite a few glorious exceptions, the state-sponsored industry was mostly producing B-movies about masked wrestlers and ficheras (call girls).
Then, in 1991, Cuaron released his Aids comedy, Solo con tu Pareja (Love in the Time of Hysteria); we saw Maria Novaro’s delicate dance-hall story Danzon; Carlos Carreras’ tale of small-town longings, La Mujer de Benjamin (Benjamin’s Woman); and Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s low-budget reality-romp Homework (or How Pornography Saved the Split Family from Boredom).
A year later, Alfonso Arau’s soppy Like Water for Chocolate became the highest-grossing Mexican film ever. Mexican film seemed to be entering a new belle epoque.
Sadly, few of those directors - Cuaron aside - have recaptured that early energy. The NFT is showcasing the very latest movies, but the season also offers evidence of the long and vibrant history of filmmaking, which has persisted through such dazzling highs and barrel-scraping lows.
To illustrate the continuities in Mexico’s cinematic tradition, it is showing classic films in tandem with modern counterparts. Audiences can watch the 1949 cabaret drama Salon Mexico alongside Novaro’s Danzon, or revisit Luis Buonuel’s tale of hopelessness, The Young and the Damned (1950), before tackling a modern story of city life, Streeters (2001). There are also old and new takes on that typical Mexican genre, chronicles of the 1917 revolution.
Mexican Cinema Now is rare in presenting new films and putting them in context. The festival also pays homage to the country’s most conspicuous star, with a selection of movies, Mexican and foreign, featuring Garcia Bernal himself.
For cinephiles, there are two significant conclusions. The first is that Mexican filmmakers, newcomers and veterans alike, continue to produce innovative and exciting movies, even if their output lacks the impact - or the celebrity hype - of Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien.
The second conclusion is that some of the biggest players in the Mexican film industry are no longer exclusively working within their native country’s borders. Mexican directors, screenwriters and photographers working abroad are more conspicuous, and more influential, than ever. Their bearing on international filmmaking is unprecedented. The selection for this year’s Cannes Film Festival proves it: The Violin was entered in a sidebar category, and two films by Mexican directors competed for the Palme d’Or.
One was Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro, a gothic fantasy set in the aftermath of Spain’s civil war. Del Toro’s chilling 1993 film Cronos set a new standard for horror in Mexico, and he is now highly in demand in Hollywood, where he has specialised in bringing to the big screen comic-book heroes such as Hellboy.
The other contender (and winner of the best director award) was Gonzalez Ionarritu’s Babel - soon to have its British premiere at the London Film Festival. Set in Japan, Morocco, Mexico and the US, and with Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt and Garcia Bernal among its stars, this is the latest work by Gonzalez Ionarritu and his usual collaborators, Prieto and Arriaga. After directing the third instalment in the Harry Potter trilogy, Alfonso Cuaron’s latest finished project is Children of Men, a science-fiction thriller based on a P.D. James novel. It has characteristically superb photography by Emmanuel Lubezki, and a cast including Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine.
Jason Wood suggests that the emphasis has shifted from “el cine mexicano” - films made in Mexico - to “el cine de Mexico”, films made by Mexicans. The shift is not just semantic. It indicates the emergence of a generation of artists with the ambition and skills to leave their imprint on a global industry. Independent, media savvy, commercially aware and displaying unique sensibilities, they are as comfortable working in London or Los Angeles as in Mexico City. The world - not just their country - is their stage. Just don’t call it a wave.
“Mexican Cinema Now” is at the National Film Theatre to October 18; www.bfi.org.uk/nft; 020 7928 3232. The London Film Festival, October 18 to November 2; www.lff.org.uk; 020 7928 3232.