Perpetuum Mobile

Nicolás Pereda’s arresting third feature, a wry, minimalist mix of slacker film and family melodrama, was named Best Mexican Feature at the Guadalajara Film Festival in 2010. Teresa Sánchez and Gabino Rodríguez revisit their mother-and-son roles from Juntos, Pereda’s previous movie. Gabino — still looking for the eponymous pooch that went missing in Juntos - is here a layabout and itinerant furniture mover in Mexico City, where he resides in cramped quarters with his neglected, weary mom Teresa, herself the neglectful daughter of an aging mother. On the hustle with moving partner and pal Paco, Gabino’s job gives him a window into the transitory lives — and disintegrating families — of Mexicans of various social classes. Famed British composer Michael Nyman makes an appearance as one of Gabino’s customers. Critic Michael Sicinski, writing for Moving Image Source, cites the movie’s debt to the picaresque films and “comic Bressonianism” of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki, and calls Juntos and Perpetuum Mobile “Pereda’s finest works to date.” “[An] amazing work ... Pereda is an anti-glamour director: everything about his characters and their situations rings true” (Howard Feinstein, Indiewire). Colour, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 86 mins.