'The Box': Golden Lion Winner Lorenzo Vigas Crafts A Tense, Slow-Burn Coming-Of-Age Drama [TIFF Review]

Comfortable in his newly found friendship, Hatzín (Hatzín Navarrete), a teenager from Mexico City who traveled to Chihuahua’s northern state to reclaim his father’s remains, pretends to be upset and explains he’s decided to return home. He laughs several seconds later, tricking Mario (Hernán Mendoza), his boss and impromptu life mentor.

Proving he can convincingly lie on command is the first indication of the lengths to which the boy will go to protect this bond he holds so precious. His distorted affection is the engine for “The Box,” Lorenzo Vigas’ new feature. The Venezuelan director won the Golden Lion for his debut “From Afar,” a razor-sharp tale set in Caracas also starring an older man and an adolescent engaged in a turbulent entanglement, though of a different nature.

For “The Box,” Vigas circumvents the prevalent drug-related violence that dominates art house Mexican cinema and instead positions it as a backdrop that, as a byproduct of the social decay, enables other dubious activity, as horrifying as what the cartels carry out, but kept under wraps to serve other interests. The approach avoids easy-to-scorn antagonists, in turn presenting everyday people corrupted by poverty or abandonment.

Alone on this voyage for closure, since his ill grandmother can’t make the trip, Hatzín handles the paperwork with indifference. The procedure calls to memory “Identifying Features,” a recent Mexican film about a woman searching for her disappeared son. And just like that project, eventually, Vigas’ psychologically elaborate, slow-burn coming-of-age drama concludes that thinking a loved one has to die might mean greater peace than the truth.

Upon receiving the container and an identification card, the young man’s return is derailed. Convinced that he knows Mario, a stubborn Hatzín hangs around long enough for the man (who he initially recognizes as Esteban) to agree to hire him to recruit large numbers of workers for the local factories. In returning the box of bones to stay in this arid and historically dangerous land, he opens Pandora’s.

As another of Mario’s helpers gives a speech warning potential employees that their biggest enemy is the Chinese and their ability to deliver the same amount of products in less time, the modus operandi starts to reveal itself. Groomed for exploitation, the men and women brought into these plants are mere merchandise for Mario and all those involved. Even if Vigas and co-writer Paula Markovitch keep the labor conditions mostly off-screen, the power dynamics and structure of the operation are clear enough.

Through Hatzín’s realization, the hypocrisy of this adult he admires, a twisted role model, and in general of the world he inhabits become evident. With the veil of innocence fully ripped away, the kid makes a series of troubling decisions only for Mario’s double standards, as a man who preaches the sanctity of family but has failed in that regard to deflate his hopes for a home. The father-son-like interactions between them range from innocuous banter to confrontations charged with resentment.

Inhospitable landscapes, arid plains later covered in snow, house the quiet storm brewing in the Hatzín. Cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (a regular collaborator of Pablo Larraín) favors eeriness in the images, often framing the characters as miniatures in extreme wide shots that highlight powerlessness or amid severe winds and the winter sunlight that coats each frame with a soft glow.

Navarrete, in his first-ever film role, remarkably contained performance. The rage that propels him might fool us into believing that he intends to uphold the rule of law or, put more simply, do the right thing” when in truth, a selfish motivation guides him. In Vigas’ muted dissection of this individual starved for parental care, emotion trumps moral concern. Navarrete’s resolute demeanor, playing it close to the vest, gives away numbered smiles and no tears. Working with stinging eyes and a still boyish voice, he unsettles.

The neophyte can hold his own with a seasoned actor like Mendoza, here playing a no-nonsense yet jovial man that can also manipulate and scheme to operate with a moral compass that points only to his convenience. Yet, if you were to ask him, he’ll never say he is a bad person and justifies the questionable business he runs as offering opportunities for people in need. Still, his actions emanating from kindness towards Hatzín can put one on the fence about judging his participation in more atrocious crimes. He isn’t blameless, but a small fish swimming for survival in the ocean at hand.

“The Box” lacks the sort of ardor that made “From Afar” so memorable. Vigas here, not all the major beats amount to substantial commentary on this relationship or the context. However, there are choices and plot elements that confirm the director’s narrative sagacity.

In a strangely intimate moment, a wide shot of the two main characters urinating on opposite sides of a restroom comes as an awkwardly fitting place for a revelation, or rather a confirmation to be unleashed. Repeatedly, the film is victorious in subverting tropes that seem to be placed there as hints to a more conventional route, such as Hatzín meeting a girl his age. But rather than a burgeoning romance, something more sinister transpires. Handling those conflicting nuances in believable form is the sign of good writing, even as it on occasion loses grasp of its subdued virtues and relies on blunt violence. [B+]

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