The Current Cinema - Ben Cho tracks down Carlos Reygadas' new film OUR TIME (Mexico, 2018)

God only knows how much of Carlos Reygadas' latest Our Time is a reflection of his own predilections in the bedroom but here's what we do know: (1) the Mexican auteur cast himself, his own wife and kids in the roles of a family dealing with the disintegration of an open(ish) marriage, (2) his previous film Post Tenebras Lux was said to be semi-autobiographical, and (3) there's nothing featuring his own wife in Our Time approaching the shock opening of his 2005 film Battle in Heaven (in case you forgot about it [unlikely] or never bothered, that film caused a minor stir due to its opening scene involving a graphic blow job featuring an attractive young woman and an unattractive fat guy). 

But in Our Time Reygadas' wife, Natalia Lopez, is not subjected to any such explicitness but instead dialogue stretches longer than most seen in Reygadas' work to date and agonisingly cringey cuckolded behaviour by her husband. 

What difference does it really make if Our Time is autobiographical or Lopez is featured in some pretty tame sex scenes? None. But over the course of three long hours watching this marital drama unfold you can't help but ponder such things and by casting himself and his family and dragging this out for three hours are we NOT meant to at least consider to what extent Reygadas is working through his own personal problems? 

Despite some visually-impressive moments peppered throughout this doesn't have quite the same knock-out look and feel of Post Tenebras Lux and there's scant exploration of the feminine experience in this doomed marriage, something which would have broken up the dull masculine energy which Reygadas the actor brings to screen. 

So what are we left with in the end? Reygadas' cuck-poet agonising as he copes with the reality of letting his wife sleep around and develop a blossoming love with an American horse whisperer while he juggles the demands of being a world-renowned poet and a bull-rancher (and of course he would have to be in charge of the alpha male bulls while his own patriarchal status wanes). 

The highlights are reminiscent of Post Tenebras Lux, narrative detours which are loosely connected to the central premise but could have been equally excised with not too much damage to the overall story: a playful war of the sexes between children on mud lake, a trip to a concert hall to see an orchestra, a flight across a dazzling cityscape, early morning unrest of bulls which leads to one falling off a cliff. These moments pack the biggest visual punch and make for more compelling viewing than the couple's marital decay. At one point as we see Reygadas visit a dying friend I couldn't help but think of the Julio Cortazar of 62 and Hopscotch and wonder if this sort of work is a very distant artistic relative to those books: infuriating relationship drama with plenty of detours and strange moments to its poetry. 

Maybe some enterprising producer at PornHub should enlist Reygadas and give him a huge bag of cash to make an epic cuckold humiliation porno in the same way they supported Bella Thorne with Her & Him on their premium network. With Our Time he's basically made an epic cuckold humiliation porno minus the pornography so it wouldn't be a stretch for him to actually insert some visually-stunning sex scenes and really delve deeper into the corrosive effect on the soul open marriages can have. For all the coke parties, the drunken fucking, the topless webcamming, the bullfighting in Our Time there's nothing really penetrating about its take on sex and marriage.  After the "lights" of earlier work is this auteur starting to dim?