The Tiff Film Reviews: Fernando Eimbcke’s “Olmo“

By Ross

I wasn’t planning on seeing “Olmo” on my second day at TIFF, but it was the one I ended up walking into on that Friday. Yet, from those first visuals of sunset horizons, mountain tops stretched across the screen, and a family resiliently walking towards the camera, I knew this journey was going to be something emotionally clever and special. Then, we hear sounds piped in loud and clever, reminiscent of late 1970s Spanish radio, blasting a sexy music video-like fantasy that is sharply interrupted by a familial yell of a person in need, stopping us all in its smart traccks.

Set in 1979, Fernando Eimbcke’s exceptional “Olmo” is a complete gem, finding humorous interactions inside a family dynamic that is deep in the throes of heartbreaking trouble and teenage rebellion. It’s a fascinating, complex, joyful ride, riding shotgun for this unsentimental portrait of a 14-year-old boy dealing with more than he thinks he is able, or should be required to. It’s a tender connecting start that moves decisively into a coming-of-age drama for Olmo (Aivan Uttapa). The young kid is as interested in cartoons as he is in the young teenage girl who is a few years older than he is, living across the street from them, and forever tormenting his sexual fantasies and dreams. She used to be his childhood friend, but the age difference has altered that connection, assigning her more power than she knows what to do with, and forcing a conflict on Olmo between the responsibilities to family and the desire to grow and experience all that adult life has in store for him, and giving him a possibly escape from the role he has been assigned.

“Olmo,” as captivatingly written by Fernando Eimbcke & Vanesa Garnica, is a generous, self-centered rebellion of the most teenage kind, that is also highly connective and emotionally true. As directed with clarity and a solid point of view by Eimbcke (2018’s “Berlin, I Love You“), we follow along with empathy and a surprising amount of care as we watch Olmo’s family struggle; with money, with responsibilities, and with the care of their ailing yet proud father, Nestor (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), who has been bedridden from advanced multiple sclerosis for the past few years. Olmo’s older sister, Ana (Rosa Armendariz), is emotionally overwhelmed yet stoic, in a way, by the responsibilities forever placed at her teenage feet. She wants to be out there in the world, engaging with friends and roller skating in circles to the sounds of the 1970s. But she is held back because she is the oldest. Her exhausted mother, Cecilia (Andrea Suárez Paz), who takes on most of the caretaking in the family, finds herself similarily stuck between a hard alone place, a broken rock, and two teenage children; one who is in the arc of rebellion, and the other who wants to hold onto his young age for a wee bit longer, but only when it comes to taking care of his father. In other ways, he desperately wants to fly free.

Then one night, Cecilia needs to work a double shift. They need the money more than she lets on, but Ana refuses the caregiving that her mother attempts to thrust upon her. She’s going roller skating, as planned, she defiantly states, with some unseen friends. So stuck in that tightening vise, the task to care for the father falls on the young, resistant Olmo, and subsequently, his best friend, Miguel (Diego Olmedo), whether they like it or not. The crisis comes when the dreamy neighbourhood ‘teen goddess’ next door invites the two too-young boys to a party, strictly because they have access to a stereo. In that invite, the prospect of teen romance and acceptance shifts his already self-centered sights from his father to the world beyond. And it’s all too impossible to ignore.

“You don’t want to learn,” yells the father, majestically portrayed by Sánchez Parra, as he attempts to mentor his son in the repair of that stereo, unaware of what Olmo has in mind for the object and the night. It’s the perfect combustible and emotional electronic engine that sheds its car lights on the problem, while also unpacking and fixing firm, the quiet undercurrent of love and care that lives inside the hearts of this family. Uttapa delivers a profoundly authentic performance, unpacking desire in all realms of rebellion and love. “Olmo“, the film and the boy, are awkward in all the right ways and grounded in the sure-footed experience of the time and place in Olmo‘s life. This joyride to authenticity shouldn’t be missed.