NORTHLESS (NORTEADO) New Lights

Selecting Debussy’s Claire de lune as supporting music for o film about a young man’s interrupted quest to cross the Mexican border for the US is typical of the inventiveness in Rigoberto Perezcano’s tender yet ironic opera prima. To love your characters as much as Perezcono isn’t pandering, but instead is a deliberate act of human connection through cinema, one particularly poignant in a world brutally divided by a mammoth border fence. Andres (Harold Torres) simply wants to cross it, but he is no simple man, as a shop owner (Alicia Laguna), her friend (Luis Cordenas) and her employee (Sonia Couoh) soon discover when he seeks refuge with them in Tijuana. Perezcono bypasses the easy choice of turning this into a farce, and instead uncovers each character’s subtle dimensions. Nothing surprises, though, quite like an ending that catapults NORTHLESS to the level of a genuine triumph.