Review of "Entre Nos"

Start with the title: Entre nos. Between us. It is a popular expression in Latin American countries, and connotes not only intimacy and trust, but also a moment of discovery. It is the same as saying, this is what I really believe, I trust you enough to share it with you, no matter how shocking or embarrassing or disagreeable it may be.

It is the title, then, of a movie directed and co-written by Paula Mendoza, that details the story of a young Colombian immigrant mother, Mariana, and her two children, Gabriel and Andrea. They have arrived in an almost pastel version of New York in the summer, maybe sometime in the 80s, maybe later, to be reunited with the father. They live in a cramped apartment, but everything looks promising, especially the empanadas that Mariana is frying in the opening scene. It should be the beginning of a dream, should it not?

Well, it will be, but it will be a dream that is hard-fought. It is apparent that there is tension in this marriage, and the father will shortly after abandon his family, to flee who knows where, he says to Miami for a work assignment, but it could be anywhere. She is left alone with two children, with little to tide her over, drowning as she is in desperation and anguish and not wanting to recognize that she has been abandoned.

We have, then, the vulnerable mother who , in this biographical story, is left to fend for herself, in an unfamiliar place, with small children. While New York may look glowing in this depiction, without the grime and the predators that are also a part of its mystique, it is still not a particularly receptive place. Whether or not we can forgive the husband, we aren’t in a position to judge. The son Gabriel puts it best: she was always needy, and maybe, it was too much for them.

As they descend she finds strength in a sort of brutish need to protect her children. It would have been very easy to imagine her giving up if it hadn’t of been for Gabriel and Andrea, who view the whole experience as a bewildering affair. There are moments when they reach out, and some extend a helping hand (the owner of the food truck, the Indian woman who rents them a room, the African-American man who gives them encouragement as they struggle to survive), but others are content not to acknowledge them. They are emblematic of a homeless population that is invisible, in other words, that needs help, that needs to be acknowledged.

Summer is portrayed in a beautiful way in this film. It is scorchingly hot, of course, but the New York presented in this movie is an idealized version, a place of memories. Maybe that is part of the reason why the movie fails to tap into the true dramatic potential of this situation. We don’t really get a sense of danger, of peril, for it all seems dreamlike. Maybe that was the point. It was sudden, and they can’t quite believe it. Neither can we, and the only real conflict we have, that between mother and son, really fails to resonate, because it isn’t really sustained.

This is a situation that befalls many families. We see people lacking resources, having to scrounge as best they can, trying to resolve their own conflicts, their own timidity, their own sense of powerlessness. If it was meant to focus our attention on a social problem, it isn’t entirely convincing, mainly because of the dramatic shortfalls.  It does, however, tell the story of little endearments, of encounters that are redemptive, of items that are thrown away but are scavenged and converted into something useful.

It is also a wistful view of a time of difficulty. Between us, it wasn’t so bad, was it? Look what we learned about ourselves and about each other. Entre nos, it signaled the start of something new. An awakening.