Home videos – especially the kind shot on early digital camcorders – appear etched with the texture of memories. For their fiction feature debut, Racornelia maximises the imperfections of this format to mount a documentary-style study of warts-and-all family dysfunction.
Set in 1990s Mexico City, the first half of the story unfolds over a tumultuous Christmas Eve dinner between bickering relatives. Both married with children, brothers Alejandro (Joaquin del Paso) and Octavio (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) are eager to show off their middle-class lifestyle. As the two families gather at Alejandro’s house, their wives Estelle (played by Racornelia) and Lisbette (Giovanna Duffour) enthusiastically join in the rivalry. Between courses and glasses of wine, sly insults fly as the young children are left to their own devices.
