Lyrical and obscure. TWITTER
The latest film from writer-director Yulene Olaizola ('Fogo') is a period piece set in the tropical rainforest bordering Mexico and Belize.
Machetes, myths and murky storytelling all find their way into Tragic Jungle (Selva Trágica), the lushly made, if highly enigmatic, fifth feature from Mexican writer-director Yulene Olaizola (Fogo), which screened in the main slate of the New York Film Festival after premiering in the Horizons section in Venice.
Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Sofía Oggioni, who lensed the award-winning 2018 Cannes film Los Silencios, this minimalist period piece follows several characters wandering the dense tropical forests between Mexico and Belize, a place where man, nature and Mayan folklore fuse together in unsettling ways.
Like the recent South American colonial tales Embrace of the Serpent and Zama, Olaizola's movie offers a contemporary take on exploitations past, although it feels more like a sampling of moods and themes than a full-fledged narrative. Still, certain moments linger in your mind — a man suddenly falling from the jungle canopy; a white horse crossing the Hondo River by raft; a couple making love in the moonlight beneath a giant tree — which should help land additional festival berths and niche distribution.
One recurring image fuels the story, which was written by Olaizola and producer Rubén Imaz: that of Agnes (the luminous Indira Andrewin), a young Belizean woman in a white dress who spends most of the movie walking through the forest, first when she escapes the significantly older English landowner (Dale Carley) who wants to marry her, then when she falls into the hands of a band of Mexican laborers extracting gum from trees using harnesses, machetes and buckets.