IXCANUL (Jayro Bustamante). Subtitled. 92 minutes. Opens Friday (August 26). See listing. Rating: NNNN
Two recent films used mountains and the women stuck between them as symbolic sites for the struggle between tradition and modernity: Israel’s Mountain and Kyrgyzstan’s Heavenly Nomadic. Look them up and then check out Guatemala’s Ixcanul, a stunning debut by writer/director Jayro Bustamante about a teen stuck on the wrong side of a volcano.
María Mercedes Coroy gives a hauntingly still performance as Maria, who dreams of life in the U.S., beyond the volcano, but is arranged to be married to the foreman at the coffee plantation her family works on. She’s the prisoner of old customs, putting on a strong face for the sake of her doting parents.
Whether we’re closely gazing at Maria or watching her stride along the ashy volcano’s side from a distance, Bustamante lets images linger long enough for their beauty to fall away, giving us a compelling and tragic look at where our coffee comes from.
