Wri/Dir. Michel Franco | Cast: Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernandez, Rupert Friend | Mexico/US. 2025. 100mins
Films about immigration don’t have to be grainy and shot with a shaky hand-held camera. This immaculate and brutally blunt thriller from Mexican writer director Michel Franco follows a minimalist folly-a-deux between an illegal alien and a fabulously wealthy do-gooder.
In his second collaboration with Jessica Chastain, Michel Franco doesn’t mince words in a terse little tale that delivers an angry punch from both sides of the border fence, this time between Mexico and the USA. The writing is astute and the tone veers from tense to intensely erotic so don’t expect romance and sentimentality when Jessica Chastain’s rich girl crosses paths with Isaac Hernandez’ Mexican migrant who stumbles out of a lorry and makes his way swiftly across the dusty roads to a town house in the centre of San Francisco .
Isaac Hernandez (currently of the American Ballet Theatre) is no ordinary Mexican wayfarer, he’s Fernando, a svelte ballet dancer who has already met Jennifer and whisked her off her stratospheric stilettos while working for her Mexico City-based dance concerns, and that explains why he knows where the keys are in the film’s opening scenes. It sees them reunited and planning to stay together despite being polar opposites, ignoring the obvious legal pitfalls. The relationship is like a jet that soars off the runway but is never going to be able to land and so doomed from the start. Fernando has risked his life to be there in San Francisco, but also to further his own career.
By way of background, Jennifer’s father is Michael McCarthy (Marshall Bell) the billionaire benefactor at the head of the McCarthy Foundation where she works on benevolent charity endeavours along with her brother Jake (Rupert Friend). Their lavish lifestyle sees them slipping into slick SUVs and jetting off in the private plane at the drop of a hat to visit the various projects, champagne and benefits are daily events for them, and money is never an object. And fair play to Chastain who totters around in a series of absurdly high heels and tailored outfits for the entire during of this tautly scripted thriller. The tone veers from tense and chilly to intensely erotic in scenes of unbridled athleticism that totally lack sensuality. But that’s the whole point. Fernando’s lithe and relaxed physicality contrasts with Jennifer’s exalted and distant guise showing that they are attracted by a desire that will eventually burn itself out given their social and political differences.
After a brief few days between the sheets Fernando grows tired of being a surreptitious sexual fling to a woman whose elevated public persona precludes him from taking part in her life. Planning to head back home, he ghosts her phone-calls, and later is seen dancing impressively outside a San Francisco ballet theatre. Fernando gets himself noticed by the head of the ballet company where he is hired for his talents and offered the lead in a new production.
Unused to not getting what she wants Jennifer, intoxicated by their chemical bond, follows Fernando only making her lust for him more powerful. Chastain gives a brilliant performance: distant and discreet, imbued with the kind of servile good behaviour women adopt when sexually mesmerised by a potent lover. The two reunite, and for a while it seems they will make a go of their lives with the ballet dancer gaining ground in his new enhanced role.
Jennifer lavishes attention on Fernando – who certainly has impressive upper body strength. The roles switch, after Jennifer makes a fatal error. Once dominant she is now forced into subservience as Fernando takes control in a disturbing volte face, the film’s political dimension coming into play in the unflinching finale.
NOW IN FRENCH CINEMAS | BERLINALE 2025