Upon Open Sky <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Upon Open Sky

Upon Open Sky sees a trio of teenagers head north from Mexico City on a mission to find the trucker who caused the accident that killed the father of the two lads. Promising enough premise, unfortunately, this is a slight film, aiming for profundity. It opens with the build up to the accident, somewhere in the dusty Mexican bush, then the crash itself acts as a timeslip point to two years later. Fernando (Máximo Hollander) scours a car scrapyard, looking for something. His younger brother, Salvador (Theo Goldin), who was in the car when their father died, understandably mopes around the house, only rising to perv on their new step-sister, Paula (Federica Garcia) as she changes for bed.

When mum and new step-dad announce they're off to Spain for a holiday, Fernando makes plans of his own to find (and maybe kill) the trucker. So off they go to a town on the US border in search of him.

Now, this film could have been much better, and I'm kind of at pains to work out why I didn't go with it. I think, ultimately, it's boring. But not just boring, I reckon it also has airs and graces, the hope of being something more substantial. Its pedigree offers clues here. The directors are sister and brother, Mariana and Santiago Arriaga, both pretty wet behind the ears as far as features go. No shame there.

A bigger hint is that the writer is their father, Guillermo Arriaga, and perhaps the fattest sausage finger of blame needs to point his way. He wrote some films for Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel among them. While I didn't mind Amores (his first feature), the other two reeked of liberal pretensions and weightiness.

Maybe this preeminence would have just been mildly irritating if it weren't for the sloppiness of the script. There's a knife introduced that goes nowhere, a gun also (Chekhov's weapons?). Characters do things that seem faintly unbelievable (see Paula's boyfriend getting out of the car on 'bugger all around' highway). And the questionable romance was completely unearned, though admittedly, could have been even more problematic.

On the positive side, the young actors that play the leads are disarming and reasonably natural in their roles, as was the trucker, Lucio (Julio Cesar Cedillo). Sadly, this nepo-baby of a film was too perfunctory to be anything other than a calling card for the performers.

Upon Open Sky is showing around Australia as part of the HSBC Spanish Film Festival, in Perth at Palace and Luna cinemas. I'd be keen to see if other people thought differently on this one.

See also:

Interestingly, the final third of this film takes place sort of near where the Coens shot some of the modern classic, No Country for Old Men (2007). The cinematographer, Julián Apezteguia, who doesn't do much wrong here, also shot the very fine, Carancho (2010), directed by Pablo Trapero.

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