Somewhere in the southwest of the United States, Mexicans Henry (Esai Morales) and Monica (Alex Meneses) Arista have built a small empire, raising two grown daughters Ximena (Carmela Zumbado) and Tania (Marisol Sacramento), both spoiled by extreme wealth. Recently working for them is Donovan Taylor (Jackson Rathbone), a white man who does maintenance around the property. He’s not entirely sure how the Arista’s have acquired their money, but soon realizes the townsfolk aren’t supportive of the reclusive family, who have a small well on their land that soon becomes part of a conspiracy, leading the Aristas to build a wall.
Co-directed by Magdalena Zyzak and screenwriter Zachary Cotler, The Wall of Mexico does not for a moment try to shirk from its political roots, the “Mexico” in the title not the country bordering the United States but rather the Arista estate. The well, which is full of pure sparkling fresh water is nothing if not symbolic of far more than it is, the wall soon around it exactly what it portends to be, with the Arista’s instructing Don to secretly stand guard, their worry that someone might be stealing their life’s work. It is as satirical as it is cynical.
Amid all this, Don finds himself falling for Tania, who, like her sister, are entirely out of touch with the working class, though well aware they exist. She and Ximena spend their days in bathing suits having hyper-intellectual conversations about the state of the world, mass media, and the rights they have to party. Don, uneducated, works alongside the steady handyman Michael (Xander Berkeley), who stays for the good pay but is suspect of everything about the family. And we feel perhaps he should be, the mystery of the well charging much of the momentum of the film, for those that have access to it seem unnaturally sustained. But is it the water or only the myth surrounding it?
This is an odd film, nothing like the expected, Zyzak and Cotler presenting it like a drug induced trippy, psychedelic metaphor with a series of increasingly weird set-pieces involving the girls and their house parties, luring Don into slow-motion, neon descents into the bizarre and isolated tributaries of passive aggressive partnerships. These are tent poles in a fuzzy story that hammers heavy on the politics with loads of imagery that fall on both sides of the line, blaming none yet everyone at the same time.
All of this is compelling enough, the premise and setup certainly plenty packed with potential for a unique type of thriller. However, The Wall of Mexico presents itself as an off-kilter dark parable of sorts and I suppose that’s exactly what it should be given the absurdity of what it works to take jabs at.
Banging away at that are the two sisters, who sit in witness to the war slowly escalating among those involved, commenting constantly on the actions around them, distancing themselves from it all with a kind of antiseptic bitterness. They are not of this world. Or, are in fact all that matter. A white hot scathing digest of what she is at the film’s end leaves Tania the razor-sharp last voice on the entire problem of, I guess, nearly everything. This before a slow sweeping shot that makes the film’s final point.
Still, almost aggressively eccentric, The Wall of Mexico lives up to its name, often keeping the viewer on the outside, the film seemingly about one thing but focused for long, long stretches on something else. It acts like its saying something important, that if we don’t pay attention for even a minute, we’ll miss the point, and this becomes kind of a hurdle in trying to decipher the smaller moments. That frustrated me because I was greatly interested is where this all would take me. Morales, who is often underused, is here as well, and I longed for him to be more on screen. But clearly, the filmmakers have a vision, and kudos for making something experimental and stingingly topical. A challenge to be sure, but recommended.