Diego Luna has used the attention gained from the success of Andor to make a fascinating movie about a young Mexican woman’s tough life in Spain. Broadly speaking it is about the ways resentment and annoyance can spoil attempts to build a better life. Ashes also knows the power of pain to teach important lessons, even though it wants to focus on the power of love. And this is explained through the story of a young woman who comes to understand why sometimes it is better to run away from home.
Lucila (Anna Díaz) is in her early twenties, lives in Madrid and works as a nanny for a difficult family. Things are no nicer at home, a small apartment where she lives with her mother Isabel (Adriana Paz), her mother’s (female) partner, and her beloved younger brother Diego (Sergio Bautista). The family are all in Spain legally, but Isabel had to leave her children behind in Mexico for eight years until she was able to bring them over. This means Lucy and Diego are unusually close, and Isabel holds Lucy responsible when Diego acts out in school as any 14-year-old does. But Lucy doesn’t enjoy needing to continue as Diego’s second mother, so when a friend offers the chance to move with her to Barcelona, she jumps at it. Initially this is a good decision. She becomes the caretaker for an older woman whose entire family treats her well, she has fun with her friends, and she even dates a English student (Charlie Rowe) who thinks she’s a student too. When Diego shows up on the doorstep for a surprise visit, Lucy is delighted. They have a great weekend only spoiled by the later discovery that he has stolen Lucy’s rent money. This theft begins a cascade of nightmarish events that are not remotely Lucy’s fault. But she has to take responsibility for them, whether she wants to or not.
Three entwined themes pull Ashes together. The first is the sacrifices adults make for the children in their lives, whether or not the children understand or appreciate them. The second is the immigrant struggle: working the worst jobs, living in the worst apartments, and never being fully seen by anyone due to their outsider status. The third, and most specifically, is the troubled situation in Mexico, where safety is an illusion and catastrophe can burst past armed guards and through locked doors. The awful sequence when Lucy and her grandfather (Guillermo Ríos) are so suddenly and so seriously in harm’s way Lucy doesn’t understand what’s happening until it’s almost too late is filmed by Damián García with a tight focus on Lucy’s face. As the setting for a personal awakening it’s hard to be more dramatic. But the final main point of Ashes is not the violence Lucy experiences, or the sad stories she hears, or even the terrible reason she has returned to Mexico in the first place. It’s that things have become so dangerous in Mexico life anywhere else, no matter how humiliating and unsatisfying, is better. The only mistake Lucy and Diego made is not understanding that in the first place.
But how could they have? Diego and Lucy were children with no father and a mother half a world away. They were raised as guests instead of family members and without anyone explaining to them how things really are. And as Lucy grew up Diego was so much her responsibility she gave him his daily bath until he was ten years old. It’s no wonder that once they are back with their mother Lucy wanted to be a child again. And it’s also no wonder that Diego struggles to navigate the world without Lucy’s protection. Ms. Díaz does a really lovely job of balancing the ways Lucy is old before her time with her sense of fun, her clear sense of herself and her attempts at making the world a brighter place for the people she takes care of. The fact that the families which employ her and even her mother exploit that good cheer definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth. But this is not the meaning of the title. It’s when Lucy does something that is both incredibly shocking and utterly understandable. The body language Ms. Díaz uses when Lucy does this makes it clear how very necessary this is for her, and it therefore, somehow, becomes the only rational decision. It’s a really impressive performance.
Mr. Luna, who also produced and adapted the script (from a novel by Brenda Navarro) with Abia Castillo and Diego Rabasa, is much better known as an actor, but this is his fourth feature film as a director. It has a calm confidence that’s rare, and the way it knits all its themes together feels like lived experience, which is even rarer. Above all it tries to be kind: the scene where the elderly woman who Lucy looks after carefully packs a suitcase is meant to be, and is received as, a gift. Ashes does a good job showing how hard it is to be kind, either in Spain or in Mexico, that the kindness is what lingers. It’s a lovely film.
Ashes (Ceniza en la Boca) recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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