New Order

In this lat­est exer­cise in dread from Mex­i­can provo­ca­teur Michel Fran­co, an ultra-swish wed­ding unfolds behind secu­ri­ty gates at a glass-and-steel mod­ern man­sion in Mex­i­co City. Soon the unex­pect­ed arrival of a much-loved for­mer fam­i­ly retain­er pricks the con­science of the bride, who’s been show­ered with thick envelopes of cash by her guests all day.

The ex-ser­vant needs mon­ey to pay for his wife’s heart surgery, and since she was also pre­vi­ous­ly employed at the house, the young lady of the manor resolves to help by tak­ing the dosh to her in per­son. White sav­iour syn­drome? Extreme virtue sig­nalling? Or a gen­uine act of kind­ness? We’re left to pon­der her motives, while we ques­tion the sense of hit­ting the roads with the city in the midst of a vio­lent upris­ing. A por­ten­tous open­ing sequence has already shown us the blood of dead and muti­lat­ed bod­ies min­gling with the pro­test­ers’ sig­na­ture green paint in an obvi­ous echo of the Mex­i­can flag. The under­class have had enough. There is trou­ble ahead.

Franco’s pre­vi­ous films, includ­ing 2012’s After Lucia and 2017’s Chron­ic, have estab­lished his crit­i­cal cred as a pur­vey­or of crisp Haneke-style vignettes about the numb­ing after­math of awful trau­ma, but here the scale is expand­ed con­sid­er­ably, and the shack­les are off. What’s the worst that could hap­pen? You’re look­ing at it. Social cohe­sion is ripped apart in a hail of bul­lets, as the rage of the oppressed turns into blood­shed, rape and looting.

Typ­i­cal of Franco’s MO, audi­ence iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is kept at arms’ length, while the stag­ing is mount­ed with clin­i­cal pre­ci­sion and dis­tress­ing believ­abil­i­ty. And unlike, say, Alfon­so Cuarón’s Roma, he avoids patro­n­is­ing the low­er class­es by attempt­ing to share their per­spec­tive. Fades to a black screen bring moments of tran­si­tion, and in the process of a wham-bam 86 min­utes, we’re tak­en to a place of tru­ly bru­tal­is­ing bleakness.

Be warned, this is a film which will might­i­ly upset its view­ers. No one, but no one, is spared. Cer­tain­ly, some of the sleek smug­ly enti­tled haute bour­geoisie deserve their come­up­pance, yet it’s hard­ly a spoil­er to hint that the green rev­o­lu­tion does not nec­es­sar­i­ly bring about a new soci­ety found­ed on fair­ness and equal­i­ty. So chill­ing indeed is the author­i­tar­i­an New Order emerg­ing from the smoul­der­ing ash­es, some might read the film as an awful warn­ing against change. Is it cyn­i­cal nihilism to deliv­er a cau­tion­ary fable to the ide­al­ists, sug­gest­ing we might be care­ful what we wish for?

Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s Salo, an exco­ri­at­ing vision of fas­cist pow­er run ram­pant, is cer­tain­ly a ref­er­ence point here, yet that played out its hor­rors in a wartime past, while this film could be hap­pen­ing right here some­time soon. Its blunt-instru­ment attack might lack a cer­tain sub­tle nuance, and it’s cer­tain­ly more of a talk­ing point than a thought-through argument.

Still, this is a jolt and then some, a film which will suc­ceed in ril­ing those on the left and the right. If you believe cinema’s job is to ask the ques­tions rather than offer the answers, then this will use­ful­ly chal­lenge you. A dirty fin­ger­nail stuck right into the open wound of our unspo­ken social anxieties.