Human tragedy

Filmmaker makes strong debut with deeply felt drama

IDENTIFYING FEATURES

★★★1/2 out of 5

Cast: Mercedes Hernández

Director: Fernanda Valadez

Duration: 1 h 35 m

Available: TIFF Bell Digital Lightbox via digital.tiff.net.

Truth be told, when I started watching this low-budget festival favourite — it won the Sundance audience prize for world dramatic cinema last year, as well as the award for best screenplay — I thought it was going to be all pretty images and no plot. But there's more to Identifying Features than meets the eye.

The story follows Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández), a woman whose teenage son leaves to illegally cross the border from Mexico into the United States. When she fails to hear from him, she follows, trying to find out what became of him.

Magdalena finds herself butting up against a system where so many migrants go missing or end up dead that people have stopped caring. A recovered bag and a burnt body would seem to close the case on the boy, but she's not convinced, and goes looking for a mysterious bus passenger who may have seen him.

Along the way she runs into another young man, recently deported from the U.S. after several years there and making his way home.

Identifying Features is a first feature from Mexican writer-director Fernanda Valadez, and it tells a story of human tragedy with images so striking it reminded me why the big screen experience is something we desperately need to get back.

There's a long tracking shot over water, so close you can't tell the skim of the surface from the sheen of the sky. Another scene features a still figure backlit by a bonfire, the shot made weirdly alien by the fact that it's running backward, so the flames go down, not up.

It's brilliant cinematography in the service of a deeply felt, all-too-common story.