Here is a new adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s 1955 magic-realist novel that later inspired Gabriel García Márquez, among others; judging by the non-linear tangle of life and death, lost loves and shattered ideals, you wonder if it wasn’t also an influence on the fractured films of the 00s Mexican new wave written by Guillermo Arriaga. With Amores Perros cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto serving as director here, this fragmentation is at first a tough introduction to the story’s teeming ghost town, then thrilling, then finally a problem.
Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta) has made a promise to his mother on her deathbed: that he will return to the fateful pueblo of Comala to finally meet his father Pedro Páramo. But who is Páramo? “A living resentment,” says the first wayfarer Juan encounters, before directing him to lodge with local innkeeper Eduviges (Dolores Heredia). After showing Juan to a bare attic room, she says that she has heard from his mother – the first sign that this ashen town is in truth a purgatory filled with wandering souls. The one thing they all have in common is a tale connected to the tyrannical landowner Pedro Páramo and his estate, La Media Luna.
