Year of the Nail

Moving stills.
”You cannot split time into moments,” one of the American student Molly’s worse halves claims, in this sweetly spiced Mexican story about immovable love told in still photos. But partitioning time is exactly what is attempted in this singular film, which in jumps – and through ultra-slow camera movements – pushes the story forward, alternating between frozen black & white and colour photos multiplied on celluloid. The result is partly a slide show with dialogue and natural sound, partly jump cuts with associations to surveillance, like Eadweard Muybridge’s serial photos.
The intimate voice-over is dominated by Molly, but also other characters – like young Diego – share their thoughts. The still photo form elegantly portrays people’s inner lives, and potential magic is released both in the gap between the spoken dialogue and the non-spoken though monologues – and between the images.

With a pseudo-sociological approach Molly – who in the film never manages to take the photos she wants – attempts to find both the strange and herself. But especially in the tactless company of her friend Katie, the stickiness of (anti)tourism is revealed, through their encounter with strange food (”I’m too much of a tourist for this food”) and embarrassingly private mariachi concerts.
But the gringa Molly steals the teenager Diego’s heart. He has previously limited himself to lustful dribblings behind the shower curtain, his thoughts pouring over his cousin Emilia’s birdlike breasts. The clumsy courtship that Diego can offer Molly on the beach makes up the beautiful and funny centre of this film.
In a tender synecdochical portrait of the US-Mexico relationship, in which the small stands in for the big, remains minimally lost in traducción. And Diego’s cancer-ridden grandfather photophilosophically asks when he is shown a digital camera’s mummification of time:
“Why does one want to see something that has just happened?” jif