My Mexican Bretzel

“Desire, Lies and Videotapes”

An upper-class woman, Vivian Barrett, in mid-20th century Switzerland confesses her desires and fears in the form of a film diary and becomes the documentary phenomenon of the moment. The less the viewer reads and learns about this delightful experiment of a film, the better. With this in mind, it can be said that My Mexican Bretzel stands out for its content: a Douglas Sirk-like melodrama about infidelities, hidden passions and the unhappiness of the European bourgeoisie of the 40s, 50s and 60s. But above all it stands out for its form. Nuria Giménez Lorang recycles stunning images shot in 16mm and super 8 from her own family archive in order to imagine a new story, while respecting the original meaning of the images.

The diaries of Vivian are portrayed with a hypnotic beauty thanks to the brilliant editing. The director takes advantage of ellipses that condense nearly 30 years of a romantic life into 70 minutes, all the while deploying a phantasmagoric use of sound and silence to develop the story.

Giménez Lorang uses images more than half a century old to talk about present-day themes, including the silencing of women by men, and, more broadly, the troubling ways that truth can be constructed. The author warns us that a lie is another way of telling the truth. and she pushes us to question the nature of cinema as a manufacturer of post-truths. Viewers will experience this film with jaws dropped and pulses racing, and with the sense that they have not seen anything similar in a theatre before. My Mexican Bretzel is as brilliant and evocative on the outside as it is complex and perverse on the inside.

Daniel Sanchez Lopez