Director: Michael Franco

Stars: Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend, Marshall Bell

Mexican director Michael Franco’s compelling and bold film begins as a realist immigrant tale before switching to something far knottier and challenging. It opens with Mexican man Fernando (Hernandez) making the dangerous crossing over to the U.S.A. Starving, he rushes into a diner on his arrival North of the border and begins shovelling leftover food into his mouth before he is bustled out. He makes his way to San Francisco, lets himself into a large house and goes to bed. When the owner (Chastain) arrives, she seems unsurprised and they have intense sex. She is Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy philanthropist. One of Jennifer’s projects is the funding of a dance school in Mexico City, which is where she met Fernando. Her voracious sexual appetite suggests she is pleased that Fernando is there, but this also means relinquishing a degree of control. Jennifer is also weary of the reaction of her racist brother Jake (a deliciously loathsome Friend) and multimillionaire businessman father (Bell). Fed up with being kept in the shadows, Fernando walks out and gets a cleaning job. Later, through his own efforts, he gets a job at a prestigious dance academy, which is the last straw for Jennifer. Rendered in chilly greys, this is a complex study of sex, submission, power and desire, as well as a brutal depiction of the limits and hypocrisy of liberal philanthropy. Chastain is brittle and brilliant as a woman used to getting what she wants, and professional dancer Hernandez suitably nuanced as a dependent who has his own agenda.

David Willoughby

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