Family Effects

Here’s Aragón’s bold gamble: reproduce the deadly feats of smugglers in the paradisiacal Mexican landscapes without naturalism or pathos, but performed by children. 13 scenes follow with morbid variations: executions, punishments, initiations. The obvious simplicity of his choices allows for a distanced representation that generates an image all the more striking as it is stripped of all spectacle, reenacting action undertaken by the common of those who one imagines to be potential actors, either present of future.