The violent shadow of Guatemala’s decades-long civil struggle looms giant over Mexico 86, an intimate political thriller a few household of two making an attempt to remain collectively because the struggle pursues them overseas. Written and directed by César Díaz, whose 2019 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner, Our Moms, additionally handled the lethal repercussions of the Guatemalan battle, this partaking if considerably rote second characteristic stars Bérénice Béjo (The Artist) as a leftist militant pressured to resolve between revolution and motherhood.

Per the press notes, Diaz based mostly the story on his personal childhood, and there’s clearly an authenticity to the best way he depicts the harried underground life that activists have been pressured to guide on the time, with a suitcase all the time packed so they might flee at any second. What’s much less convincing is the movie’s tepid emotional environment and predictable chain of occasions, even when they result in a quite transferring finale that manages to drag the rug out from underneath us.

If Our Moms was extra of a contemplative narrative concerning the struggle’s long-term traumatic aftereffects, Mexico 86 hits the bottom working and by no means actually lets up. After a prologue, set in Guatemala in 1976, exhibits activist and up to date mom Maria (Béjo) witnessing her husband’s homicide by authorities thugs in broad daylight, we skip 10 years forward to seek out her dwelling underneath cowl in Mexico Metropolis, the place she dons a wig, goes by the identify of Julia and works as an editor at a progressive newspaper.

Maria is much from residence however nonetheless deeply entrenched in her fight, shacking up with a fellow activist, Miguel (Leonardo Ortizgris), and doing her greatest to struggle Guatemala’s military-backed — and U.S.-supported — dictatorship from a distance. She’s additionally doing her greatest to remain shut along with her 10-year-old son, Marco (Matheo Labbé), who lives with Maria’s mom (Julieta Egurrola) again residence. When the 2 arrive in Mexico for a go to and Marco winds up staying, it places Maria in a tricky spot: How can she be a great guardian whereas waging a clandestine struggle towards a right-wing junta?

The dilemma remembers the one in Sidney Lumet’s 1988 masterwork Operating on Empty, an analogous story of household ties and leftist revolutionaries that was made two years after the occasions on this movie are supposed to happen. However whereas Lumet’s devastating coming-of-age story offered a significant shot to the guts, particularly in its portrayal of an adolescent making an attempt to crawl out from underneath his dad and mom’ weighty shadows, Mexico 86 is much less emotionally efficient total, and works greatest throughout its handful of suspense sequences.

One has Maria receiving a secret file about Guatemala’s mass killings solely seconds earlier than her contact is stabbed on a crowded avenue. In one other sturdy scene, she escapes from her condo with Miguel and Marco, which ends up in a automobile chase with the key police. After they get caught in a visitors jam, the chase turns right into a shootout, with Maria at one level showing to carry a gun to Marco’s head — a telling signal that she’d quite sacrifice her personal youngster than hand him over to the enemy.

There’s a approach out of all this, however it’s a tricky one: Maria’s overseeing operative (performed by Fermín Martínez from Narcos: Mexico) tells her she will ship Marco off to a “hive” in Cuba, the place he’ll be raised with different kids of the revolution in relative security. However the bond between mom and son appears to be tightening, regardless of some rocky moments, and Maria clearly doesn’t need to surrender both Marco or the larger battle.

Béjo, whose personal dad and mom fled the dictatorship in Argentina and settled in France, does a great job portraying Maria’s push-and-pull between household and political engagement. The trail her character takes can really feel apparent at instances, and there’s a basic lack of depth to Diaz’s script, even when it’s been drawn from actual occasions. But the director manages to land a robust ending that places the effaced Marco entrance and middle in a significant approach, even when it comes a tad late.

The movie’s title refers back to the 1986 World Cup, which happened in Mexico and which is rarely referred to besides in just a few perfunctory moments. The larger backdrop to the story is what occurred in Guatemala throughout the darkish years of its many dictatorships, together with a genocide within the early ’80s that result in a whole lot of hundreds of deaths. If something, Diaz succeeds in conveying how deadly the battle in his homeland really was, making its approach into overseas lands and tearing loving households aside.