Sol (Naíma Sentíes) joins her aunts, Nuri (Montserrat Marañón) and Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), as they prepare to celebrate Tona (Mateo García Elizondo), her father, on his birthday.  The ailing patriarch, young as he is, will probably not see another birthday, so the party also serves as a poignant farewell to the man.  The children, however, have been protected from this unfortunate news, but even they are able to sense a strange atmosphere and are unrelenting in the questions they ask of the adults. 

Written and directed by Lila Avilés, Tótem premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival where Sideshow and Janus Films acquired the tender, 95-minute, coming-of-age drama for state-side distribution.  Lauded across its festival run, it was submitted by Mexico where it made the shortlist for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards, though it missed out on making the final ballot.  At its widest theatrical release in the United States, it only graced 12 screens, so its induction to Janus Contemporaries offers the most reliable way to catch this gentle yet powerful film. 

The film is filtered through Sol’s point of view, and while for much of the narrative she is in the dark about her father’s terminal diagnosis, Avilés is careful to never infantize her young protagonist.  She is, to use some modern mommy-blog speak, a little body with big feelings; and persistent questioning.  Sol is astute to her surroundings even if she is being shielded from the nuance of the situation, and Sentíes gives her character a streak of fearlessness as she sets her sights on getting answers and interrogating the adults around her. 

As for the adults in her life, they are hard at work processing that this will be the last time they celebrate their husband or their brother’s birthday and striving to make everything right as they celebrate a life being taken too soon.  The house is being furiously cleaned, the decorations meticulously placed, and the cake labored over for hours.  The irony here is that as the women pour their energy into the work, they are spending less and less precious time with Tona.   

The wider ensemble brings such controlled chaos to the film and Diego Tenorio puts us in the middle of the melee with a lens that probes as if this was a documentary or a newsreel capturing a catastrophe in action that we are helpless to stop.  This tragedy is further boosted in the edit by Omar Guzmán who whips us up into the frenzy but also lets us linger with these characters – especially as the sun begins to set on the party – so that we are in an emotional lockstep with Sol across the runtime. With little music, the film relies on the diegetic sounds of a family working together in close quarters to deliver its atmosphere. The bumping into each other, doors opening and closing, feet running across the floor, clanking of dishes, and whispered conversations from the other room are but some of the sounds that designer Guido Berenblum uses to great effect in conjunction with the work of the cast who keep their characters busy so as to ignore the cloud of death which looms over the home. 

Though predominantly tragic, Avilés injects the script with a natural sense of humor to keep things light and balanced.  This humor also helps to humanize the characters in their grief and forge their relationships with each other.  It is all in service to the authenticity of the film, and no doubt that Avilés built great trust with her cast as she pushed them to dig deep into their own life experiences in front of Tenorio’s lens.  This trust pays off as the cast all deliver deeply affecting performances that resonate with us on the other side of the screen.  We are welcomed into the family almost immediately, but with it comes the duty of mourning. 

Tótem is a very special little film that packs behind its simple concept and brief runtime a powerful story.  Avilés works like a poet on the page, slowly revealing the gravity of this party through careful conversations, and even more carefully through the non-answers.  Providing the framework, it is up to her cast to make this family real – their joy, their love, and their grief – a task at which they each excel in unique ways.  It makes Tótem something really special, like the feeling of flipping through an old family photo album, and though its unassuming nature may not make it seem like required viewing, it far exceeds our expectations.  Wrapping us up as if in a warm blanket, the film is surprisingly comforting given its subject matter, and its impact will linger in our minds long after we have left the film as if it were an evolving memory of a loved one of our own.