‘Two Seasons’: Film Review

It’s rare for the debut feature to upset the perfect balance of ingredients, and it’s especially rare when it does so in a distinctive and memorable way. Writer and director Juan Pablo González achieves just that two seasons. Her first narrative film is at once a vivid portrait of the place and its people, an unsentimental ode to the arts and crafts of tequila making, a devastating reflection on the consequences of globalization’s economic policies, and a sophisticated character study with Teresa Sánchez. Ensure strong restraint performance.

Like María García, Sánchez, the once prosperous but generous owner of a tequila distillery in western Mexico, in his first major role in a feature film, switches from the first scene to the end. He is one of the few professional core actors where many non-professionals play their own versions of the film. Working primarily in González’s hometown of Atotonilco El Alto, in the Halico Highlands, Helmer and his co-authors Anna Isabel Fernández and Ilana Coleman invited actors to collaborate on the dialogue. This choice, combined with the inclusion of irrelevant personnel, saturates two seasons With an exceptional authenticity that combines documentary sensibility and artistic narrative.

Gonzalez’s film, which won the True/False Festival True Vision award in March, is both magical and urgent, reflecting the results of NAFTA on the ground, nearly 30 years after the trade deal changed the American business landscape. Through Maria’s story, she questions the importance of success on an uneven playing field and the devastating consequences of greed and unbridled competition.

The sense of place is powerful, whether or not the director takes us to areas where gyms Drink agave, or follow the fermentation process of plants through the distilleries, or simply invite us to observe the soil and the sky. It is a drama that focuses on the details, the images, the words and the silence between the characters, the dialogue in the layers of sound or sometimes the singing of birds and insects, the sounds and melodies of the radio, the sound of casino slot machines. – Restores the meaning of overused terms like “craft” and “society”. And it tacitly opposes rural stereotypes by virtually reflecting the spectrum of stony identities and their everyday acceptance.

Maria is a well-respected businesswoman, a tasteful, high-quality chef who has extended her father’s and father’s achievements to build an elegant distillery (the place is an institution run by the Gonzalez family). The portrait that hangs on the back of her desk is not just any tribute, but a work that stands out in its primitive modernism: an image of her, with compressed hair and intense eyes, painted with bold strokes.

Maria lives alone. Her team includes the hostess (Anna Rosa Fuente Estrada), the “right man” (José Luis Flores), who oversees the distillery’s logistics, and the landscaping consultant (professional actor Manuel García-Rulfo). Whatever her personal yearnings are, and they find indelible expression throughout history, motherhood is definitely not one of them. “There are too many children,” she comments without irony or apology on the boy’s birthday.

It was there that he met Rafaella (Rafaella Fuentes), who had moved to that region of the country after being fired from the management of another tequila factory. Mary could have hired someone with Rafaela’s knowledge, but faced with the “serious agave crisis,” the best she could offer a young woman was a partial salary plus a room and board. The deal is done.

The crisis facing María and other independent tequila producers is twofold. Here there is an urgent problem of fungi destroying agave plantations and the constant invasion of foreign brands with deep pockets, pushing family businesses beyond the famous and profitable growing industry.

While Maria tries to keep the company afloat, her employees, at least for a while, patiently understand and appreciate the pay cut. The brief interaction reveals multi-year connections: he knows everyone by name, knows what’s going on in their lives, and on payday hands each one a check in person. What has also been revealed is its importance to the local economy, not just as an employer but also as a charity. Among those who helped him is Tatin, the salon’s owner. Tatin, played by Atotonilco resident Tatine Vera, an openly transgender hairdresser, illustrates an interesting story line that reflects the community’s resilience. His visit to a nearby casino with his mother, where she meets the soft-spoken Fernando (José Galindo), is a gentle romantic interlude.

For Maria, heart problems are less overt and simple. Her attraction to Rafaela is clearly seen in the look he steals from her and how delighted he is to see the local sights. Although Rafaela still calls herself “the lady” in the office when they leaf through debt-laden books, there is a strange closeness between them. There is also a line that Maria cannot cross.

It’s been 40 minutes since the movie, when Maria’s stern facade crumbles, if only for a second: she smiles, she really smiles. Later, the brief sequence that unintentionally finds two women in the kitchen at the same time is absolutely stunning. At Maria’s suggestion, they dance to a song on the radio. “I will be guided,” he says, his confidence and pleasure something to see. When Rafaela asks her where she discovered her change, her answer is impressive, in two words that testify to the strength, cunning and loneliness that marked her life.

This scene is seen at the narrow door, an excellent example of how cinematographer Gerardo Guerra helps shape the narrative. The symmetrical compositions emphasize Maria’s central position in the city as well as her separateness. The distinctive chamber is also combined with the otherworldly beauty of the agave cones, the cleanliness of the landscape and the location of the plant in it, both in relative calm and after a disaster. (The filmmakers filmed after the 2018 hurricane; most narrative sections were filmed in late 2020, but the filming process began earlier and was on hiatus for four years.)

Livia Serpa’s deliberate, leisurely paces and director’s cut are essential to the film’s hypnotic dramatic language, as is Carmina Escobar’s ethereal score, which reflects the beauty in question as well as Maria’s growing anger at her plight.

María is an unforgettable character to whom Sánchez gave a brilliant and mysterious life (housekeeper, Where are your stories?), which received the Special Jury Prize at Sundance. The play emphasizes the notable moments when the character’s heavily suppressed emotions and fervent hatred of “inflated Americans” come to the fore. Those moments become longer, more determined, more destructive. Sánchez and González make this unforgettable pillar of Atotonilko understandable in all its achievements and in all its resistance.