Take to the Road: ¡Viva! Presents New Mexican Cinema (18-22 Jun)

HOME breaks its ¡Viva! cherry this month with a weekend celebrating the cinema of the largest Spanish speaking nation, Mexico. Festivities kick off with the UK premiere of En el último trago (18 & 20 Jun). The programme tells us it’s a buddy road movie centred on the comic misadventures of a trio of octogenarians as they make their way through rural Mexico. If you’re thinking along the lines of The Last of the Summer Wine Goes Loco, you needn’t worry, there’s not a bathtub sliding down a hill in sight. HOME will welcome director Jack Zagha Kababie to the screening, who’ll join the audience for a Q&A after the film.

Before the comic shenanigans of opening night, HOME’s artistic director of film, Jason Wood, will put Kababie’s work in context with an introduction to Mexican cinema and the road movie tradition (18 Jun). Wood has a soft spot for the genre (his all time favourite film is one of the best, Chris Petit’s Radio On), and what he doesn’t know about the Mexican new wave could be written on the back of your opening night ticket stub. Be sure to take a pen and paper, you’ll want to note down all the titles Woods recommends.

Continuing the road movie theme is Güeros (22 Jun), the debut film from Alonso Ruiz Palacios. Shot in black-and-white, the film is a laconic hangout movie following three brothers as they take to the tarmac in search of an elusive folk singer so good he’s rumoured to have once made Bob Dylan weep. The film is knockabout, but it’s also gently political. It calls to mind Mexican new wave knockouts Y Tu Mamá También and Duck Season in the way its social commentary plays out as a spiky backdrop to the more ephemeral worries of the relatively well-off protagonists.

More overtly political is Hilda (19 & 20 Jun), which focuses on the relationship between a lonely middle-aged housewife and her fiery maid, who begins to remind the older woman about her revolutionary past: “Being part of a country stricken by so many inequalities and home to millions of poor people, the Mexican upper class is a mixture of waste and guilt, of acts of charity, classism and exclusion, and a walking contradiction,” says director Andrés Clariond Rangel of the film. “I wanted to make a social portrait without overlooking the protagonist’s emotional complexity.”

Paraíso’s (20 & 21 Jun) themes, like its characters’ torsos, are softer. The gentle comedy follow a rotund couple who are deeply content with their comfortable life in one of the easygoing suburbs that satellite Mexico city. Their equilibrium takes a knock, however, when they’re forced to move to the capital. It’s a bit soapy at times, but it’s also heartening to see a romantic comedy where the protagonist don’t conform to the beauty standards we are used to seeing on the big screen.

HOME’s cafe will also be doing its bit to bring a Latin American flavour to Manchester, serving up a selection of Mexican-themed treats – we’re also promised the ¡Viva! favourite Churros and hot chocolate will be on the menu.