ICA
Nightmarish stories intertwine with dreamy visuals to create an unsettling, and strangely entrancing, film in “Tempestad.”
The documentary, directed by Tatiana Huezo, spotlights two women tormented by Mexico’s Kafkaesque justice system. The first is Miriam, a young mother working at an airport in Cancun who was accused, apparently without evidence, of human trafficking. “We call you payers,” she recalls her court-appointed lawyer saying. “People who pay for other people’s crimes.” She was taken to and held at a “self-governing” prison run by gangs, where her family was forced to send money each week for her protection.
Adela, the film’s other subject, speaks of her daughter Monica, a college student who disappeared and is suspected of being kidnapped by human traffickers with the help of the local authorities. Adela continues her search for Monica, even as she is threatened with death by criminal groups who demand that she stop.
Miriam and Adela tell their tales while Ms. Huezo and her cinematographer, Ernesto Pardo, deliver images that are often only vaguely related to the stories. As the women recount the horrors, we see footage of dark rooms, bus rides or crumbling buildings. Long, languid views of Mexican landscapes, city streets and shipyards are woven with voice-overs that recount tortures, emotional agony and murders.
It’s an artful and lyrical assembly; by splitting the audio from the visuals, and filming random strangers rather than the speaker, Ms. Huezo seeks to create a sense that “what happened to Miriam could happen to anybody living in Mexico today,” she writes in her director’s statement.
It works.
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