Tótem review – family tensions feel real in heartfelt Mexican cancer drama | Berlin film festival 2023

There is a beautiful, but for me also rather placid, sadness at the centre of this new movie from Mexican actor-turned-director Lila Avilés, whose 2018 debut The Chambermaid I very much admired, and which I think had more dramatic weight and bite than this followup, heartfelt as it is.

The question arises: what is the “totem” of the title? Is it one of the many objects to which people attach significance here, objects with significance in Mesoamerican history? Or more everyday objects, including a bonsai tree and an elaborately decorated cake? Or is the “totem” the lead character: Tona (Mateo Garcia), a talented young artist dying of cancer? His extended family and friends are throwing Tona a big party at his house, defiantly celebrating his life and the love that surrounds him, while maybe not acknowledging their obvious misery, and also the fact that making this last great effort to attend a party in his honour may simply finish Tona off.

Interestingly, Tona himself is absent for the first half of the film, which is more about the various members of the family busying themselves with their preparations, possibly with avoidance tactics and displacement activities which will allow them to look away from the awful truth. Scenes with the children extend with an easy improv-style shape. There is Tona’s sister Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), who is stressed about cooking her cake and at one moment shockingly slaps her daughter for being rude about the zany clown wig that Tona’s daughter Sol (Naíma Sentíes) is going to wear. There is tension with Tona’s other sister Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), but Tona’s partner and Sol’s mum Lucia (Iazua Larios) is keeping it together. Tona’s father Roberto (Alberto Amador) is a psychotherapist with a consulting room in the family home, a throat cancer survivor who is dismayed at the mumbo-jumbo treatments his children have welcomed. This includes a woman who dispels the supposed bad-karma energies by waving a burning stick around and burping exorcistically.

It is only in the second half that Tona really appears: a waif-thin figure who does not talk about his feelings in any way. And there is his nurse Cruz (Teresita Sánchez), whose wages the family haven’t paid for two weeks and whose real importance in Tona’s life perhaps deserved more screen time.

There are tensions and arguments. The siblings can’t decide if Tona should be given more morphine, which helps with the pain, but renders him incoherent, and is in any case expensive. Nuria and Alejandra argue on the night about Nuria’s drinking and Alejandra’s supposed bossiness. A Chinese-style hot-air balloon symbolically launched from the garden, chaotically catches fire … but not seriously. Finally, Sol mimes to a song wearing her wig.

But actually nothing of real significance happens: nothing is of significance compared to Tona’s imminent death and the love they have for him. And perhaps that is the point. But I found something bordering on preciousness in Sol’s child’s-eye-view innocence, in the atmosphere of Zen acceptance (flawed and qualified though of course it is) and in the enigmatic and unforthcoming figure of Tona who has nothing of substance to reveal to us about himself. But this is clearly a very personal project for Avilés, and the heartbreak feels very real.

There is a beautiful, but for me also rather placid, sadness at the centre of this new movie from Mexican actor-turned-director Lila Avilés, whose 2018 debut The Chambermaid I very much admired, and which I think had more dramatic weight and bite than this followup, heartfelt as it is.

The question arises: what is the “totem” of the title? Is it one of the many objects to which people attach significance here, objects with significance in Mesoamerican history? Or more everyday objects, including a bonsai tree and an elaborately decorated cake? Or is the “totem” the lead character: Tona (Mateo Garcia), a talented young artist dying of cancer? His extended family and friends are throwing Tona a big party at his house, defiantly celebrating his life and the love that surrounds him, while maybe not acknowledging their obvious misery, and also the fact that making this last great effort to attend a party in his honour may simply finish Tona off.

Interestingly, Tona himself is absent for the first half of the film, which is more about the various members of the family busying themselves with their preparations, possibly with avoidance tactics and displacement activities which will allow them to look away from the awful truth. Scenes with the children extend with an easy improv-style shape. There is Tona’s sister Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), who is stressed about cooking her cake and at one moment shockingly slaps her daughter for being rude about the zany clown wig that Tona’s daughter Sol (Naíma Sentíes) is going to wear. There is tension with Tona’s other sister Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), but Tona’s partner and Sol’s mum Lucia (Iazua Larios) is keeping it together. Tona’s father Roberto (Alberto Amador) is a psychotherapist with a consulting room in the family home, a throat cancer survivor who is dismayed at the mumbo-jumbo treatments his children have welcomed. This includes a woman who dispels the supposed bad-karma energies by waving a burning stick around and burping exorcistically.

It is only in the second half that Tona really appears: a waif-thin figure who does not talk about his feelings in any way. And there is his nurse Cruz (Teresita Sánchez), whose wages the family haven’t paid for two weeks and whose real importance in Tona’s life perhaps deserved more screen time.

There are tensions and arguments. The siblings can’t decide if Tona should be given more morphine, which helps with the pain, but renders him incoherent, and is in any case expensive. Nuria and Alejandra argue on the night about Nuria’s drinking and Alejandra’s supposed bossiness. A Chinese-style hot-air balloon symbolically launched from the garden, chaotically catches fire … but not seriously. Finally, Sol mimes to a song wearing her wig.

But actually nothing of real significance happens: nothing is of significance compared to Tona’s imminent death and the love they have for him. And perhaps that is the point. But I found something bordering on preciousness in Sol’s child’s-eye-view innocence, in the atmosphere of Zen acceptance (flawed and qualified though of course it is) and in the enigmatic and unforthcoming figure of Tona who has nothing of substance to reveal to us about himself. But this is clearly a very personal project for Avilés, and the heartbreak feels very real.