Domin­go and the Mist – first-look review

It may be one programmer’s predilec­tions, it may be the dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence of Covid and var­i­ous quar­an­tines final­ly mak­ing it into films, or per­haps it’s my own self-selec­tion bias, but a trend is emerg­ing at this year’s Cannes. A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the low­er pro­file films in the Offi­cial Selec­tion min­gle fan­ta­sy with real­i­ty, nev­er ful­ly giv­ing way to either. 

Pietro Marcello’s Scar­let finds witch­es in the woods, Ele­na López Riera’s The Water has an enchant­ed riv­er which takes women dur­ing mon­soons, Ali Cherri’s The Dam revolves around a sen­tient tow­er of mud in the Sudanese desert, and Cos­ta Rican writer/​director Ariel Escalante Meza fills his film Domin­go and the Mist with a beguil­ing fog which seems to bring the dead back to life. Or does it? What’s inter­est­ing about all these films, and Meza’s in par­tic­u­lar, is how open they leave the fan­tas­tic ele­ment up to interpretation. 

Domin­go and the Mist fol­lows a lat­er mid­dle-aged man named Domin­go on a quest to save his home in the Cas­ca­jal de Coro­n­a­do area of Cos­ta Rica from demo­li­tion. The region is extrav­a­gant­ly lush – wild, green over­growth spreads out in all direc­tions, and climbs palm trees toward the sky. But some­one wants to pave par­adise and put up a high­way. All but Domin­go and two friends, Paco and Yen­drick, have accept­ed the buy­out by the time the film begins. 

Among the three Domin­go is the most rad­i­cal in his resis­tance to the dis­pos­ses­sion attempt. In an ear­ly scene he throws a rock at a sur­vey­or and shouts, ​“screw you, fuck­er!” Once he starts hear­ing gun­fire at night and sees a threat­en­ing man on a motor­bike rid­ing around the remain­ing occu­pants’ homes at all hours, Domin­go brings a shot­gun every­where he goes. But he has more to lose than just his land and livelihood. 

When the mist rolls in and blan­kets the jun­gle canopy, Domin­go throws open his win­dows. It pours as smooth­ly and seduc­tive­ly as cream into his home, where it swirls around him and begins to speak in the voice of Sylvia, Domingo’s dead wife. Some of Meza and DP Nicolás Wong Díaz’s best work in the film is in stag­ing and cap­tur­ing the mist. At times it races through tight jun­gle cor­ri­dors toward a far away clear­ing; oth­er times it ris­es and spreads as gen­tly as a loaf of bread, cot­ton­ing over the street lamps and dif­fus­ing the light exquis­ite­ly. Impres­sive­ly, all the effects are practical.

Domin­go and the Mist isn’t exhil­a­rat­ing­ly paced or full of flashy per­for­mances or cam­era work, which may lose more impa­tient view­ers. While it hews to a straight­for­ward nar­ra­tive arc through­out, Meza allows the film to drift into an atmos­pher­ic, med­i­ta­tive mode, full of long takes and glacial­ly slow pans, as bor­der­less and vaporous as the mist itself. 

The film is also as heartrend­ing­ly emo­tion­al as it is bit­ing­ly polit­i­cal. ​“You have no idea how much I miss you,” Domin­go says to the mist. And though we hear Sylvia recite poet­ic pas­sages over scenes of Domin­go and the jun­gle, we nev­er see her spir­it in the mist. Per­haps Domingo’s real con­nec­tion is with the land, and his wife, his great love, is insep­a­ra­ble from the love of home.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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