‘Olmo’ review: Fernando Eimbcke delivers Plan B’s first micro-budget feature

Dir: Fernando Eimbcke. US/Mexico. 2025. 84mins

A bittersweet and deceptively slight household drama set in late ’70s New Mexico, Fernando Eimbcke’s fourth characteristic Olmo exhibits that, 20 years on from his a number of award-winning debut Duck Season, the Mexican director retains his stylistic hallmarks. Spare, minimalist remedy, compassion and wry, deadpan humour outline this story concerning the tragicomic efforts of the titular teenager to make his means, towards all the chances, to a celebration. 

A loving homage to an period

The primary challenge to emerge from Plan B’s not too long ago launched micro-budget movie financing initiative, Olmo, which premieres in Berlin’s Panorama and has dialogue in each Spanish and English, deserves to journey past the US indie and Latin American markets that are its pure residence.

The movie is ready in 1979, in a New Mexico city iconically outlined by establishing pictures of a glinting solar, dusty roads, freight trains and neon indicators. Fourteen-year-old Olmo (Aivan Uttapa) lives together with his bedridden father Nestor (Gustavo Sanchez Parra, finest recognized to worldwide viewers from his flip because the canine handler in Amores Perros), who has MS; long-suffering mom Cecilia (Andrea Suarez Paz); and hard-smoking, fast-mouthed sister Ana (Rosa Armendariz). 

The intro sequence, a cleverly executed homage to late 70s music movies, reveals that Olmo has a crush on Nina (Melanie Frometa), who lives in the home reverse. “We noticed Freaky Friday collectively,” Olmo complains to his sidekick Miguel (Diego Olmedo), “and now she ignores me.” Miguel’s cool Tony Lama boots are one among a number of operating jokes.

Early scenes are, if often over-extended, an affectionate portrait of the household’s difficult, messy existence. Not a lot occurs, nevertheless it does so entertainingly: Nestor’s mattress must be modified, which brings the entire household into co-ordinated play. They owe three months’ lease, so Cecilia has to go to work on a Saturday and Olmo must take care of Nestor. However that is exactly the night that Nina invitations him and Miguel to a celebration – a dream come true for them each.

Olmo diligently units about making an attempt to get out of taking care of Nestor by searching for assist from his supercool Uncle Julio (Valentin Mexico), who presents to face in earlier than arguing with Nestor and promptly disappearing once more. One other enjoyable scene has Olmo and Miguel desperately making an attempt to repair the stereo they should take to the occasion whereas Nestor, quite than simply fixing it himself, frustratingly insists on turning it into an electronics class. The deadpan comedy strikes right into a extra surreal, poetic register when the boys do lastly handle to get away – however they find yourself wandering into a close-by wake. Olmo and Miguel pay attention respectfully to a guitar and voice model of Cuco Sanchez’s sorrowful ranchera basic ‘Mattress of Stone’, and Olmo has a surprising imaginative and prescient of Nestor sitting up from the coffin – the prelude to the movie’s extra sombre closing stretch.

A drama about immigrants, Olmo wears its politics flippantly, preferring to face as a movie a few household who occur to be immigrants. Scriptwriters Eimbcke and Vanesa Garnica clearly love their characters, to the extent that, in a movie which is so good at evoking its place and time, you sense they’re drawing on direct reminiscence. Nestor wears the humiliations of his MS with resignation however, through typically merciless little acts of revenge towards the world, he nonetheless finds methods of exercising his energy. Cecilia comes throughout as a dignified, exemplary mixture of resilience and kindness, although with a tinge of unhappiness.

As Olmo, Uttapa is hard and pragmatic in a world during which every part – stereos, women, automobiles, and certainly his personal father – are breaking down on a regular basis. It’s Olmo’s goals that maintain him going – goals not solely of Mina, however the fabulous American dream of driving a quick automobile alongside a dusty freeway. A number of different such little particulars abound on this loving homage to an period, all rigorously bathed in pure gentle by DoP Carolina Costa. Radio music, principally snatches of interval Mexican pop and disco songs, is virtually omnipresent and key to the characters’ lives – although area can be unexpectedly reserved for Slade’s raucous 1973 hit ‘Cum on Really feel the Noize’.