Everyone thinks they know what to expect from a genre exercise. Horror films have their codes. The subdivision of cannibal flicks, chalked off like a crime scene by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is its own peculiar terrain of terror. What do we talk about when we talk about Leatherface? The unknowable grotesque. Mutant derangement. Stupid kids. Smokehouse barbecue! Working south of the border, Mexican director Jorge Michael Grau approaches the subject with a fresh appetite.
We Are What We Are We Are What We Are—which flows off the tongue more poetically in the Spanish, Somos Lo Que Hay—brings the arthouse to the charnelhouse. Set in a shadowy precinct amid a Mexico City of decaying sprawl and fetid alleys, the film introduces the audience to the knowably grotesque, and not even quite that. It's more of suspense drama than a bug-eyed shocker, intent on humanizing the inhuman by emphasizing the primal necessities of a binding social structure and three squares a day. Only, in this case, the abiding unit is a family of flesh-eaters. The clan experiences a massive freakout when its patriarch collapses and dies on a city street. As the camera watches from a slight remove, the body is efficiently gathered up, blood washed away as if nothing ever happened. Only once the corpse is sliced open for an autopsy does it give up its secret: an undigested finger.
We Are What We Are This marvelous moment arouses the suspicion of a pair of buffoonish cops, who go off hot on the trail, as if—in a city where thousands of people vanish every year without a trace—it's really going to matter. Meanwhile, back in the dark apartment, the bereaved have little more than tears to sop up. By profession a clockmaker, the father also brought home the bacon in other ways: He did all the hunting and killing, presiding over a mysterious dining ritual that accompanied every slaughter. When mom (Carmen Beato) laments that her husband was ruined by his whores, she means it like most of us might disparage spicy food. But she can't keep a leash on Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro), the eldest, who determines to take charge of the family's needs, spawning a feud with his equally headstrong sister (Paulina Gaitan) and younger sib Julian (Alan Chavez) over various aspects of proper operating procedure. Grau insists on showing rather than telling, letting the gravity of the situation gradually accumulate meaning for the viewer.
We Are What We Are How exactly does one hunt a human? The kids don't know. In a jarring comic-horrific sequence, Alfredo goes after the default prey—a random, unlucky streetwalker—plucked from a familiar corner. Speeding off while the working gal screams bloody murder, the boys give new meaning to the phrase "fast food." But in a parody of sexual initiation, once they get her back to the house, they don't know what to do with her. Though she vividly describes what she'd be happy to do with them if they only let her free. Mom’s pissed, but also pragmatic. Whacking their victim in the skull, she quickly decides which side of the "pets or meat?" debate she's on.
We Are What We AreThe bleak, if irresistible, humor resonates with a gothic sitcom punch, and doesn't miss a shot at ironic existential touches, as when a religious crazy on a bus hands Alfredo a scrap of paper with the motto: "You are alive." But it's also purposefully offset with genuine coming-of-age flourishes and an eye for anatomizing the lower depths of Mexico City as surely as our protagonists indulge in grisly dismemberments. Obscuring the gore for the most part, Grau instead brings to (extremely low-level) light the human stain. As the clocks tick-tock in a maddening chorus, cops circling the cannibal compound before one of the most ill-advised house calls since The Human Centipede, Alfredo bolts off on an adventure—stalking a cluster of pretty young men to a disco. The last third of We Are What We Are becomes a thrilling display, as Grau and his cinematographer Santiago Sanchez wind through alleys and perch voyeuristically, fluid motion nimbly tracking the action through penumbral locations that would have done Val Lewton proud.
We Are What We AreHere's a bit of a spoiler, but it's essential to give Grau credit for investing his characters with a sympathetic complexity. Alfredo's apparent struggle over zeroing in on his target may have more to do with revealing his sexuality than diet preferences. That frission rhymes nicely with the sleight-of-hand employed to keep us guessing about what all goes down in the cannibal lair, a candle-lit abattoir which is finally explored in the midst of a shoot-out.
Enough remains ambiguous that We Are What We Are practically compels a repeat viewing, as if stirring a pot of soup for an errant scrap of meat. Dare I say it? The movie makes you hungry for more.
[We Are What We Are opens in limited release today, from IFC Films.]
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