‘Tótem’ Review: Lila Avilés Shows Extraordinary Eye For Detail In Oscar Entry From Mexico

Stephanie Bunbury
·4-min read

When Tonatiuh was at school, he was voted his year’s “Beach Boy,” a prank version of Miss Universe. As part of a town parade, hunky Tona was a “vision, slinking down the street,” remembers an old classmate in one of many stories being swapped at the now 30-something beach boy’s birthday party.

Things are in full swing, but Tona (Mateo Garcia Elizondo) has yet to make an appearance. He is in the quietest bedroom in the family home, struggling to get dressed for the second time. He was slowly making his way to the garden when he lost control of his bowels. Shit happens, as you might say. He is resigned to it.

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Tona is dying. Everyone knows it, but his 7-year-old daughter Sol (Naima Senties) clings to the belief that if she holds her breath and makes a wish often enough, her still-beautiful dad will survive. Sol has been drifting all day around the house, which is bustling with aunties, uncles and party preparations; her mother Lucia (Iazura Larios), a theater actor, has left her there while she goes to play a matinée. Sol watches her auntie Nuri (Monserrat Maranon) bake and burn the cake; her little cousin Esther (Saori Gurza) sit on top of the fridge playing with the cat; and her grandfather (Alberto Amador), a psychologist whose white beard recalls the father of his profession, boom at a weeping patient through his electronic voice machine. She is waiting out the hours until she can help blow out her dad’s candles.

Tótem, Mexican director Lila Avilés’ second feature – which won the Ecumenical Award at the last Berlin Film Festival and is now Mexico’s entry for the Best International Feature at the 96th Academy Awards – bustles around in sympathy with the family. The camera slips among them, seemingly squeezed up against their stressed but determinedly cheerful faces, within the confining square frame of Academy ratio. Much of this controlled chaos is seen through Sol’s eyes, occasionally from under the furniture or through a crack in the door. You see a great deal if you’re small. As does Avilés, in fact; her eye for telltale detail is extraordinary.

Nuri, the cake-maker, is clearly relied upon to be the capable angel of the house, but her wings are battered; she sips so much comforting wine all day that when the party rolls around, she’s barely able to stand. Her daffy sister Alexandra (Marisol Gase) barks orders, smokes incessantly and in the middle of the day orders in an exorcist to rid the house of bad spirits. “That’s enough, Alexandra!” comes father Roberto’s robotic voice as the psychic smokes out bad energies from the walls with a burning loaf of bread on a skewer. “I’m not in the mood for your satanic nonsense.”

Roberto should take it down a few notches, grumble his daughters. Perhaps they all should, but each of them is overwhelmed – differently, but together – by the grief they are already anticipating, their togetherness a crackling mix of mutual irritation, deep affection and desperation. A wisp of conversation reveals that while there may be other treatments Tona could try, there is no more money, not even enough to cover the nurse’s fee. Later that night, Ale will produce a piggybank and ask the guests for contributions, trying to make a joke of it.

Meanwhile, Sol seeks her own kind of respite in silent communion with animals: a snail in a bush, the dog monitoring the front door, the goldfish presented to her by an ebullient uncle. Accordingly, we cannot really see Tona either. For the first half of the film, he is just a shadow in a darkened room, barely able to brace himself against his nurse Cruz (Teresita Sanchez) for his daily exercise, seen in brief glimpses. Nothing in Tótem lingers, because nothing is milked for emotion. This is a film about family tragedy without a shred of sentimentality; you can just about imagine Nuri telling you that you can cry on your own time.

Even when Tona has cleaned himself up and Sol is finally allowed into the sick room to hug him, even as Lucia comes back from the theater and the little family within a family can finally be together, their precious moments are cut short. Because here are the party guests, waiting with surprises, speeches and acts they have been rehearsing for the occasion. Sol, sitting on her mother’s shoulders under a cloak that covers both of them, delivers the showstopper: a lip-synched operatic aria. Very little has happened in this small space – a modest house and garden – but something has shifted. Sol is no longer holding her breath.

Title: Tótem
Distributor: Janus Films, Sideshow
Release date: January 26, 2024
Director: Lila Avilés
Screenwriter: Lila Avilés
Cast: Naima Senties, Montserrat Maranon, Mateo Garcia Elizondo, Marisol Gasé, Alberto Amador
Running time: 1 hr, 35 min

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