Viena and The Fantomes (2020, Gerardo Naranjo) (Patreon)

21/100

No explanation has yet been offered (at this writing) as to why Naranjo's followup to Miss Bala sat on the shelf for six years, but I'd like to believe that he simply forgot about its existence until finally prodded. Certainly, whatever it was that initially excited him about this story and/or these characters and/or this milieu never made it to the screen. Viena remains a passive cipher throughout, defined exclusively by her superficial relationships with the band's drummer (I guess?) and its chief roadie (I guess?); as those parentheticals suggest, The Fantomes and its employees/entourage never remotely come into focus, to the point where I still wasn't 100% sure at the end of the movie which guys are actually in the band; only the absence of modern tech (plus an occasional cassette deck or drum machine) reminds you that this is supposed to be happening in the '80s, an era for which Naranjo demonstrates zero curiosity or understanding despite having been a teenager at the time. So pervasive is the blandness that it's tempting to blame this disaster entirely on cultural dislocation, though in fairness I should note that some of my peers felt similarly about drama/mex and I'm Gonna Explode, both of which I found orders of magnitude more vividly detailed than this bizarre exercise in squandering female talent. (Only Sarah Steele emerges with dignity intact, mostly by virtue of cheerfully accepting her character's essential irrelevance. Evan Rachel Wood should sue for defamation.) Excruciatingly dull until the last 15 minutes, when it suddenly becomes outright risible, pivoting to a pointless attempted murder and implied actual murder. I've heard encouraging things about Kokoloko, Naranjo's other long-delayed film (which appears to be very much Mexican), but rest assured that no #TeamViena movement will arise. Sometimes dead is better.