las hijas de abril ★ 2017 ★ michel franco
valeria is a 17-year-old girl who is 7 months pregnant. she lives with her sister, clara, near the beach. valeria and her boyfriend, miguel, are happy while they wait for their baby. unfortunately, the three struggle to make ends meet, and clara advises valeria to ask their mother for help. valeria isn’t enthusiastic about that idea since she hasn’t spoken to her mother at all, not even to tell her about her pregnancy. but she eventually accepts, and her mother returns to their life…
this film could have been good, but i’ve now seen how miguel franco loses the way and focuses on things that he shouldn’t or doesn’t make them land well without throwing us something else. the man has good concepts but poor executions, unfortunately.
if you have a spider-sense like me, you’ll notice 100% what’s going to happen. i do applaud that franco had a good ‘bad’ character such as abril, who looks like her brain already pathed a way to achieve her goal since the beginning. miguel is a fucking idiot who, tbh, didn’t give anything but serve as a plot device. abril’s reasoning is not explained in any way, but her real attitude towards her daughters is subtly shown since she first appears. with clara, for example, it shows how disgusting abril finds clara’s weight and eventually makes her exercise and get laxatives. unfortunately, clara’s response for this is not seen in the movie, and she doesn’t get any attention after that, which is a shame. we have two sisters with different struggles, but there’s no impact of that on camera: also, clara and miguel aren't an organic piece in the media who have their desires and goals. they're a device for one of the main protagonists, and fell rather dull and useless..
there’s no explanation or backstory, and clara is just there. and i’m not someone who likes everything explained by the characters (as we’ve seen how directors are doing in recent movies), but there’s nothing but a few hints that let you wonder what clara or miguel thought during or after what's happening... yes, movies were there's not many amount of dialogues or poetic dialogues can picture the character's struggles (like the pianist<3), but michel tries to mimick this type of films and fails to understand them, thus his execution is very poor and relies on specific scenes to show shock, rather than have a momentum.
abril is the strongest character in the movie, and no wonder since she’s the one getting the main focus throughout the movie. the act of being a good mother who tries to help her daughters by taking care of everything, even taking care of the baby to do after what she does, was good, imho, since you can notice she started to work to get what she wants. valeria gets the spotlight after that happens, but her presence is not as strong, and it feels as if franco remembered he had another main character who needed to finish the movie somehow? lol which also you can see what she's trying to do, but how this ended was so lackluster and didn't tie anything together? also miguel's fate is so boring and nonimportant because he's a fucking idiot lmfao and abril taking advantage of his stupidity or 'innocence' as you want to see it, looks ridiculous.
the ending was predictable, imho. but i didn't expect abril to abandon the baby LOL? perhaps it explained more about her erratic behavior and how after something doesn't go as she wants, she dips out immediately?. also, you can see this as a high-budget telenovela who tries to be serious lol. not that bad of a movie, but the lack of porpuseful dialogues and filler characters do make this film rather mediocre. good concept, bad execution!!! i guess i'm harsher with mexican movies but quiero ver más películas mexicanas buenas y que no existan solo para imitar otros estilos cinematográficos!!!
perhaps abril wanted another chance in life and act like a young girl again, since she mentions having a child while she was young. she wanted to steal her daughter’s life—and, well, a mom who wants to act like she’s young young never ends well, as we see with some people on tiktok…