Get the latest gossip
‘Pedro Páramo’ Review: Rodrigo Prieto Respectfully Adapts One of Mexico’s Most Famous Novels in Surreal Debut
The 'Babel' cinematographer’s first feature as filmmaker hops back and forth in time to transition between crime drama and surreal ghost story.
A tale of ghosts and memories that slips through time, Mateo Gil’s screenplay follows the structure of Juan Rulfo’s 1955 text with stringent fidelity, laying the groundwork for a melancholic (if slightly imbalanced) adaptation that finds visual splendor in the macabre. Tenoch Huerta (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) plays Juan Preciado, a man who travels to his late mother’s hometown of Comala sometime after the Revolution (1910-20), in search of the father he never met: a figure named Pedro Páramo (Manuel García Rulfo), who he quickly learns has died as well. Its introductory scenes are magnificently disorienting, between focus (and lack thereof) that doesn’t follow the conventional rules of background and foreground — Prieto doubles as his own DP, sharing duties with Nico Aguilar — and environments that appear to change so subtly that they prick and gnaw at the subconscious.
Or read this on Variety
