Monday, July 06, 2009

RUDO Y CURSI - funny Mexican fable

RUDO Y CURSI is a tongue in cheek Mexican fable about being careful what you wish for and love-hate sibling relationships. Rudo (Rough) and Cursi (both "smooth" and "camp") and two step-brothers living in poverty in rural Mexico. Both have ludicrous dreams of escape - Rudo has his gambling "system" and Cursi wants to go to America and become a pop star. When fortune favours them in the form of a travelling football scout, their key mistake is their refusal to forget their childhood dreams and just be thankful for what they have.

The resulting film is very funny - physical humour, obscene jokes, and a warm-hearted mockery of village life and the naivety of poor kids who see a jacuzzi for the first time. When Rudi becomes a big-time goal-keeper he gets a hair-quiff and ray-bans; Cursi gets vulgar blonde highlights and a gold-digging girlfriend. Both make themselves ridiculous. Writer-director Carlos Cuaron has a better sense of the absurd than his brother Alfonso and has made a more playful, if more disposable, movie. I love the way he uses colour and language and frames his shots. A particularly clever device is not to actually show any soccer footage early on in the film but to show reaction shots to Cursi scoring goals.

Put simply, I had a great time watching this flick and I can't wait to see what Carlos Cuaron does next.

RUDO Y CURSI was released in Mexico last year and in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Panama, the USA, Canada and Israel earlier this year. It is currently on release in Portugal and the UK. It opens in a fortnight in the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on September 30th.

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