The Frame

Director: Cary Fukunaga
Screenplay: Cary Fukunaga
Producer: Amy Kaufman
Starring: Edgar Flores, Paulina Gaitan, Kristian Ferrer, Tenoch Huerta, Luis Fernando Peña
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 96min.

The delicate balance of emotional involvement in these individuals with the unsentimental, unwavering style kept me rapt for the entire film.

Originally posted at Row Three on 1 April 2009.

[xrr rating=4.5/5]

Once in a while, a first-time director jumps onto the scene with a film that is so assured and so well-made and has such an air of vitality and realism that it’s difficult to believe he hasn’t made a dozen films already. Cary Fukunaga has pretty much done that with Sin Nombre, a favorite at this year’s Sundance Film Festival that’s now in limited theatrical release.

The story is relatively straight-forward. In one thread, teenage Sayra travels with her uncle and estranged father from Guatemala through Mexico toward the United States, where the father has started a new family in New Jersey, riding illicitly along with hundreds of others on the tops of freight trains. In the other, Caspar, a young member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, tries to balance his loyalty to the gang with his love for a girl from the right side of town. The threads inevitably come together, and while it’s not difficult to figure out most everything that happens, suspense is not what keeps you interested in the film and the lives of the people it depicts. The delicate balance of emotional involvement in these individuals and their situations with the unsentimental, unwavering style (not to mention flawless visuals, camera setups, and editing) kept me rapt for the entire film, and I wanted to keep the experience with me all day.

For the most part, Fukunaga tells his story sparely, not adding in very many extraneous details. We learn who people are and what they want by just following them around and overhearing their everyday conversations – Sayra’s uncle convincing her to undertake the dangerous and illegal journey, Caspar recruiting a barely adolescent boy into the Mara. Nothing is out of place in this narrative, and yet it all feels natural. The non-plot-related sequences that Fukunaga does include, such as ones that illustrate the transient community aboard the train and the outposts that serve them, lend a pathos to the world surrounding our characters that’s welcome and real rather than sentimentalized. After getting tired of seeing film after Hollywood film that gives unnecessary backstory, exposition, explanation, and resolution, it’s extremely refreshing to see a film that knows exactly how much to tell and exactly when to stop.

The topic of illegal immigration is omnipresent in the film, as Sayra is trying to cross the border illegally and we are unequivocally intended to root for her to make her way into the United States uncaught. That said, Fukunaga does not get explicitly political – he shows us the lives of particular people whom we grow to care about. Certainly there’s an implicit message there, especially right now as it’s such a political hot topic. I don’t want to get into it – however you feel about the US-Mexican border, Sin Nombre tells its story well, and that’s all I really ask of a film.