Tótem – first-look review

You might already be famil­iar with the wide­spread super­sti­tion that if you hold your breath and make a wish while dri­ving through a tun­nel, and man­age to make it through the oth­er side with­out breath­ing out, that wish will come true. Lila Avilés’ lyri­cal new film opens with this very scene as a sev­en-year old girl Sol (Naí­ma Sen­tíes) is sit­ting in the back­seat of her moth­er Lucía’s (Iazua Lar­ios) car sur­round­ed by a bun­dle of bal­loons. The assump­tion that they could be head­ed to anoth­er child’s birth­day par­ty quick­ly dis­si­pates when Lucía asks Sol what she had wished for, to which she responds with, ​“I wish that dad­dy will not die”.

It soon becomes appar­ent that the fête in ques­tion is to cel­e­brate her father, Tona’s (Mateo Gar­cia) birth­day. The film unfolds as Sol arrives at her grandfather’s home, where prepa­ra­tions are tak­ing place for the sur­prise par­ty, whilst Tona’s advanced stage of ill­ness keeps him con­fined, bed-rid­den and vol­un­tar­i­ly iso­lat­ed in the dark­ness of his bed­cham­bers so as to spare his fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly his daugh­ter, the sight of his dete­ri­o­rat­ing phys­i­cal con­di­tion. Diego Tenorio’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy is exquis­ite, his lens care­ful­ly delin­eat­ing the inte­ri­ors of a large res­i­dence that appears to be home to a seem­ing­ly tight-knit fam­i­ly made up of grand­fa­ther Rober­to (Alber­to Amador), his daugh­ters Nuria (Montser­rat Marañón), Ale­jan­dra (Marisol Gasé) and Ester (Saori Gurza) and their own chil­dren of vary­ing ages who wan­der in and out of the picture.

Each char­ac­ter with­in this sprawl­ing multi­gen­er­a­tional cast feels incred­i­bly fleshed out, lived in, and true to life, and Avilés ele­gant­ly shifts the focus from one fam­i­ly mem­ber to the oth­er. The trust between her and the cast feels pal­pa­ble and ground­ed by her intu­itive direc­tion, espe­cial­ly in the case of the young Naí­ma Sen­tíes, whose inquis­i­tive char­ac­ter anchors the entire ensem­ble as she wan­ders around the home, plac­ing slugs on paint­ings, build­ing pil­low forts and eaves­drop­ping on con­ver­sa­tions in antic­i­pa­tion of the moment she final­ly gets to reunite with her father.

There is a rich, trans­fix­ing lev­el of detail with­in Tótem’s nat­ur­al sym­bol­ism – it’s tac­tile and nev­er heavy-hand­ed. The film’s inti­mate visu­al sto­ry­telling and tech­ni­cal prowess are fur­ther bol­stered by an impres­sive sound design and sharp edit­ing, both guid­ed by the prin­ci­ple of ​“show, don’t tell” and cul­mi­nat­ing in an extra-sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. And although unequiv­o­cal­ly under­pinned by pro­found sad­ness and impend­ing loss, a ten­der spir­it of warmth and lev­i­ty per­me­ates the screen, sus­tain­ing a buoy­an­cy that keeps the film from sink­ing into mawk­ish waters.

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

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