This very dark Mexican independent comedy by director Daniel Gruener, takes place over a week in Mexico City as two economically vulnerable families clash over a recently deceased body.
Carlos(Humberto Busto), the loser son of a struggling middle class family, must accompany his beloved Uncle Julio to the only funeral home open on a Sunday. His father charges him with making sure the body is cremated, choosing the least expensive urn, and collecting the tax receipts. Hapless Carlos fails at all three tasks.
Unfortunately, the funeria is run by the corrupt, scheming Quino(Silverio Palacios), operating his business out of the local pulqueria(a bar selling crude, fermented agave juice called pulque). He sells bodies out of the back of his shop, cremating street dogs to substitute for the ashes, among other schemes. Working class Quino requires money to keep his depressed and lonely daughter Ana(Maya Zapata) in university, the family’s ticket to middle-class success.
Days later Carlos finds out that his friends at the university medical school are using Uncle Julio for anatomy dissection. They retrieve the body, leaving Carlos to find a proper disposal, with the added difficultly that Uncle Julio is now university property. Furthermore, his father needs the tax receipts for the cremation ASAP. This brings Carlos back to Quino’s shop. Quino, already under threat by unhappy buyers and unravelling schemes, is decidedly uncooperative.
Predictably, Carlos meets and falls in love with Ana. Both are outsiders to their peers and routinely disappoint their parents. Ana, ostracized for her father’s morbid business and her adoption of goth style, is tormented by local kids and given the nickname “Zombie”. Her parents worry that her weirdness and unpopularity threaten their investment in her education. Carlos struggles to finish his last high school subjects while his friends start medical school. Standing in line to pay the family’s phone bill is another failure on his long list, when leaves bored and spends the money on drugs and alcohol.
The film is fast paced, humorous, and entertaining throughout. Each of the actors imbues their characters with dimension and humanity. With an obviously low budget, it was mostly filmed on location in the streets and establishments of lower class neighborhoods adds to the authentic feel.
While very funny, the dialog is natural and authentic, avoiding lines and obvious jokes. One major fault, for those unfamiliar with Mexican Spanish, is that the English subtitles are heavily sanitized and/or awkwardly translated. In a mixed audience, Mexicans and others with Spanish were laughing hard, while those with only English were wondering what they missed.
Official site: http://www.morirseendomingo.com/
(Screened as Never on a Sunday at Seattle International Film Festival, May 27, 2007)
