It takes a special sort of confidence to make a quiet movie, and that’s exactly what director Fernanda Valadez displays in her debut feature, Identifying Features.
Written by Valadez and Astrid Rondero, the movie follows Magdalena (Mercedes Hernandez), a mother from a small village in Mexico, as she travels toward the United States border to track down her teenage son, who disappeared while trying to get to Arizona. She encounters a series of obstructions along the way—both bureaucratic and criminal—as well as a twentysomething man named Miguel (David Illescas), who has recently been deported from the U.S. and is trying to reunite with his own family.
As director, Valadez lets patient observation and careful framing do most of the talking (there’s little dialogue and hardly any music). At a law-enforcement facility early on, Magdalena dutifully sits in a line outside while body bags holding corpses of other missing persons are carried back and forth in the background. When she does get to talk to officials or others who might help her, the camera rarely reveals their faces, resting on Magdalena’s increasingly defeated visage. In its careful observation of a surprisingly persistent woman making her unlikely way through menacing societal systems, the movie recalls both Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
And yet, despite its hushed demeanor, Identifying Features does have a few crucial flourishes that distinguish it from those films. There is an extended single take that follows Miguel from behind, Dardenne-like, as he crosses back over to Mexico, emphasizing his isolation amidst security lights and border traffic. And the movie’s striking opening shot—of Magdalena’s son approaching the bleary, partly open casement windows of their home—recurs later with a striking difference: this time he appears, briefly, exactly between the two panes, heartbreakingly clear.
Then there is the film’s standout sequence. Having tracked down an older, indigenous man who shared a bus with her son, Magdalena finally learns the boy’s fate (I won’t spoil it). Valadez chooses to let the man speak in voiceover—in his own, non-Spanish language, without subtitles—as the camera turns to the events he describes. It’s a jarring technique, yet of a piece with the smeary, inflamed imagery, which provides only a horrible hint of what’s happening. By the time we see a flicker of a figure that appears to have horns and a tail, the previously hushed Identifying Features evokes the roaring, transcendental terror of another Mexican feature: Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux. For a quiet movie, this leaves you rattled and undone.
