Club Sandwich

Description

Chubby, subdued 15-year-old Hector and his doting single mother Paloma seem to be in a deep tropical torpor at their low-budget, Mexican resort hotel. In the tender bubble of their relationship, they pass the idle hours lounging by the empty pool, mindlessly watching TV in their room over the hypnotic hum of the air conditioner, playing simple games and teasing each other out of boredom. Ordering food from room service is the only event that breaks the day’s monotony. But when the odd, even less talkative young Jazmin arrives with her strange and distant parents, a delicate and amusing romance begins to stir between the teens. Director Fernando Eimbcke’s comic minimalism captures a level of intimacy that is rare, painfully realistic and movingly funny. Both Lucio Giménez Cacho and María Renée Prudencio humorously convey the fragility and awkwardness of adolescence, the weird and terse conversations, the clumsy nascent sexuality and the sudden shifts from apathy to engagement. In a touching performance as Hector’s mother, Danae Reynaud softly reveals her conflicted emotions. Paloma seeks to ease Hector’s discomfort with Jazmin, but she sometimes trips on her own possessive love for her son. In limning what may be the least verbal romance in cinema history, director Fernando Eimbcke employs a delightful restraint that brings forth an intimacy, acuity and comic release that few films can match. –Gustavus Kundahl

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