Robe of Gems (Natalia López Gallardo, 2022) (Patreon)

If you are not familiar with the work of Natalia López Gallardo, the opening sequence of Robe of Gems, her feature directing debut, will help you place her immediately. Following the opening credits, we get an uncomfortably long black screen that slowly begins to brighten. Over the course of about four minutes, the image fades in to a tree-covered landscape at dawn, saturated with a hazy, preternatural light. It is very much like a minimalist rendition of the great opening shot in Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light. It's no accident. López Gallardo is Reygadas' wife and collaborator, having edited all his features (as well as works by Lisandro Alonso and Amat Escalante). She also co-starred with Reygadas in his film Our Time, an excruciating cinematic inquest into the collapse of their relationship.

Fair or not, it is next to impossible to consider Robe of Gems without at least implicitly comparing it with Reygadas' films. As it happens, the comparison works in López Gallardo's favor. Robe of Gems is equal to or better than every Reygadas film, with the exception of Silent Light. And although the similarities between the couple's directorial styles go well beyond that beatific treatment of the land, Robe of Gems is particularly notable for how it departs from Reygadas' button-pushing surrealism. There is no red neon devil here, no explicit inter-generational sex or distraught man ripping his own head off. Instead, there is sorrow and confusion.

Several reviews of Robe of Gems have complained that there is no discernible plot, and although I think this is a bit lazy of those writers -- there are obviously characters and events in the film -- it's also sort of a fair cop. López Gallardo's film is about lawlessness in rural Mexico, the saturation of life there with cartel activities, sudden kidnappings, and the constant violent degradation of women. Of course, these are the aspects of contemporary Mexico that are almost gleefully sensationalized in American media. But López Gallardo is taking a very different approach. While Robe of Gems strongly suggests that the evils that plague Mexican society are indeed banal, this in no way mitigates the trauma that is visited upon individuals and families on a regular basis.

With this in mind, López Gallardo offers a vague outline of familial and community relationships. We know that one family, led by Isabel (Nailea Norvind), is comfortably upper-middle-class. Their long-time servant Marí (Antonia Olivares) is their direct connection to the various crises that have not yet affected Isabel's family. Marí's sister was abducted several years ago, and when Isabel tries to persuade her to contact the authorities, she tells her in no uncertain terms, "you're not from here. We do things differently." That's because the local police are intimately involved with the kidnappings, drug running, etc. The tendrils of criminality wend their way into every aspect of the community; there is no way to escape.

This becomes evident as Robe of Gems goes along. Where other films might draw a clear line between victims and perpetrators, that distinction has virtually no meaning here. Marí's anguish at having lost her sister does not prevent her from teaming up with another group of kidnappers when she needs money. Similarly, Eugenia (Mónica Poggio) is a thoroughly crooked police captain who, despite her own implication in the system, is livid and afraid when she learns that her son Adán (Daniel García Treviño) has become a low-level gang member for the cartels.

It's true that López Gallardo makes it difficult to discern who is on what side, or even what events lead to obvious consequences. But I think this frustration is clearly intentional. Near the middle of the film, we are taken into a police division, one that specializes in investigating kidnappings. As the detectives take statements and call out victims' names from their files, it is clear that abductions are as commonplace as car thefts of muggings. This scene is like the knot that holds Robe of Gems together, in the sense that it is López Gallardo's most explicit articulation of the terror and chaos that dominates this community. For most of the rest of the film, she offers a much more experiential picture of this pervasive dread. Like the characters, we cannot find our way through Robe of Gems in any coherent way. Individuals we expect to protect others prove to be violent, and sometimes vice versa. These reversals are not presented as twists or revelations. Instead, they merely add to the miasma of despair. Robe of Gems is a cinematic Guernica, a tableau of absolute dissolution.