We Are What We Are (2011)

Francisco Barreiro as “Alfredo,” Paulina Gaitan as “Sabina” and Alan Chávez as “Julián” in
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE directed by Jorge Michel Grau (L to R)
Photo credit: © Selina E. Rodríguez Martínez
An IFC Films release

This week started with the Film Noir Blog-A-Thon, a wide-ranging analysis of the kind of films that explore the dark side of humanity psychologically, or physically, in the spaces its characters can inhabit--shady back rooms, shadowy alley ways, etc.--and where violence, murder, sex and intrigue are characteristics of the genre's general body.  So We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay) opened theoretically in good company to receive the story's demented family dynamic and ritual cannibalism.  If noir is defined by alienation and the plight of the outsider, We Are What We Are plunged right off that sheer precipice into insanity.  It may not be noir itself, it is instead, with a stake through its heart, a horror whose syrupy human entrails are so tactile they might get caught in your teeth.  But that's the hitch.  We meet a nuclear family of five banging their fists on the table for cuisine that's inhuman, unpalatable, but for them, normal.

Hidden in a secluded nook of Mexico City apart from the sterile geometry of its downtown, are rusted, scrap metal-sided houses where the family resides, hungry and waiting for their patriarch to arrive with their next meal.  When he never comes, a mother and her three kids redefine the role of head of household, and fend for themselves in a series of predatory power plays.  Who is the next patriarch?  Is the unwitting prey they drag across the threshold of their home appetizing to everyone?  This isn't a matter of chicken or pizza for a weekday dinner, these lonely offspring argue over a prostitute or a policeman.  Amidst an old analog backdrop of a wall of cacophonously ticking clocks, these human hunters are so separate from the rituals of society that they intervene almost mockingly, as if to say, If we can't join you for dinner, we'll just have you for dinner.  If We Are What We Are was not so sodden in its aesthetic of sticky blood, you might not forgive its anemic social commentary.  In either case, you won't be going back for seconds.