It takes a long time for the films of Arturo Ripstein to reveal themselves. Their mysteries unravel in time, allowing you to enter a world that on the surface appears familiar. But something is always amiss. “Bleak Street,” which opened at New York’s Film Forum last week, puts us, as the title suggests, in a world where sadness and terror coincide. The streets of Mexico City, where the film takes place, are photographed as if they are a warzone. And the more time you spend with the film, you realize that, in many ways, they are.The twin brothers at the center of the story, La Akita (Guillermo Lopez) and Muerte Chiquita (Juan Francisco Longoria), are little people who act as mascots for bigger, more popular wrestlers — the opening act for the main event. The two bothers never take off their lucha libre masks, wearing them as a source of pride as well as as a shield for the world that surrounds them. They are known but remain unknown. The only connection they have, aside from with each other, is with their mother, who acts as a manager for them and helps them put together their costumes for each wrestling performance. Their story clashes, about halfway through the film, with the parallel narrative of Dora (Nora Velazquez) and Adela (Patricia Reyes Spindola), two aging prostitutes. Both have worn out their welcome on the streets, have trouble getting customers, and are not allowed to work a corner that’s under the watchful eye of a local female pimp who does her business, with a desk and two teen henchmen, in a dark alleyway. When the two women encounter the two brothers, they see more than potential customers and they devise a plan to scam the brothers and walk away with some much needed cash.Ripstein is an acknowledged influence in Mexico and serves as a figurehead for a younger generation of adventurous filmmakers, but his reputation is limited in the United States. In a career that has spanned 40 years, Ripstein’s films have typically been regulated to the fringes of certain international festivals, with a few receiving a small, almost invisible theatrical release. (The one tribute that’s been paid to his work outside of Mexico was a retrospective in 2013 at the Harvard Film Archive.)Ripstein is often mentioned in the same breath as Luis Buñuel, with whom he had worked early in his career as an assistant director. There is something of the surreal in “Bleak Street,” which ties him to his mentor, but the real connection is his evisceration of machismo. As far back as his work in “The Castle of Purity” (1972), a film that, it should be said, seems to have been completely lifted for the critically lauded “Dogtooth” (2009), Ripstein appears to have been preoccupied with the ruinous forces of male power, especially in the form of the father figure. In “The Castle of Purity,” a father literally keeps his family locked up in their home, terrorizing them in one moment and making them fear what’s outside their familial walls in the next. In “Bleak Street,” traditional male figures exist only on the margins, and when they do emerge it’s to steal, or make trouble, or promise something that they can’t deliver.When the two narratives of “Bleak Street” collide, the film takes a different shape and picks up speed. But it takes too much time to get there. There are two different films here, the first one featuring Ripstein’s floating camera (via the stark cinematography of Alejandro Cantú) roaming the streets, following various characters through the maze of their lives. The second is more conventional, almost a thriller. One is not superior to the other, but the shift would have worked better if it were more abrupt. Instead, it was telegraphed from the beginning of the film, which leaves the viewer waiting for the inevitable.
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