Sweet ‘Olmo’ devolves into coming of age clichés
Like its namesake, “Olmo,” Spanish for elm, is sturdy and symbolic of revolution and the desire for change. It’s about a New Mexican teenager revolting against the authority of his parents, but it’s also very much a striking metaphor for the oppression of immigrants across the globe.
Boiling big issues down to a microcosm has been a specialty of Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke and “Olmo” is a prime example. On the surface, it appears wispy and wafer-thin, a standard 1970s-set coming-of-age tale about a 14-year-old abandoning his familial duties in favor of a golden opportunity to romance his sexy neighbor. But Eimbcke and his longtime collaborator Vanesa Garnica also make it clear their tale is also very much a subtle affront to our nation’s cockblock to the wants and needs of folks who’ve come to the U.S. seeking to fulfill an impossible dream.
It’s also a scorching critique of a woefully inadequate health care system that is bankrupting our most vulnerable citizens, like Olmo (Aivan Uttapa), his older sister, Ana (Rosa Armendariz), and their migrant parents, Nestor (Gustavo Sanchez Parra) and Cecilia (Andrea Saurez Paz). Unable to afford a personal care attendant, it’s up to Olmo, Ana and their overtaxed mom to share in the duties of tending to an incapacitated Nestor.
Before being felled by multiple sclerosis, Nestor was a successful electrician more than able to support his clan. But with his income eliminated, the burden of paying for food and rent has fallen on Cecilia, whose waitressing job can’t begin to cover all the bills. Three months behind in the rent and with eviction just weeks away, she’s at her wits’ end. And her children are fed up playing nursemaid to their pops, especially on a sunny Saturday, when they’d much rather be hanging with their friends.
Suddenly, the phone rings. Cecilia is unexpectedly offered an extra shift at double the pay; she jumps at it. But that means one of the kids will need to alter their plans to stay home to watch over Dad? After much hemming and hawing, Olmo draws the short straw. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s just locked up an opportunity of a lifetime to spend Saturday night partying with the lovely Nina (Melanie Frometa). What to do?
It’s the sort of dilemma that sitcom writers have spent decades regurgitating the clichés of girls, cars and sex with diminishing results. No different here. That is, unless you seek out deeper meanings, which isn’t always easy. Because on the surface, “Olmo” can be frustratingly ethereal, and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. And it seems requisite that Olmo be gifted with a chubby, nerdy wingman in Miguel (Diego Olmedo), whose lone purpose is to be the film’s moral compass.
Eimbcke also struggles mightily with pacing and tone. Scenes drag on too long or jarringly shift from comedy to drama, such as a scene in which Olmo and Miguel accidentally stumble into a wake and Olmo grabs at the corpse, believing the departed to be his father. Uttapa also struggles to generate chemistry opposite Frometa, or at least not enough to subscribe to the idea she’s Olmo’s dream girl.
His scenes with Parra, though, are the film’s lifeblood. There’s great love between father and son, but Olmo draws the line at devoting his every waking hour to him … until he’s reminded how empty his life would be without Dad. You can’t help but feel empathy for both, but you also wish their relationship was in service of a much deeper dive than an 84-minute movie allows.
As I said, what you take from “Olmo” completely depends on how eager you are to look in the back of the closets and under the sink. That’s both the film’s strength and greatest liability. But if you’re willing to do the work, you just might enjoy relaxing beneath the leaves of “Olmo.”
Movie review
Olmo
Rated: Not rated
Cast: Aivan Uttapa, Gustavo Sanchez Parra, Andrea Saurez Paz, Diego Olmedo, Rosa Armendariz and Melanie Frometa
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Writers: Fernando Eimbcke and Vanesa Garnica
Runtime: 84 minutes
Where: In theaters Aug. 7 (limited)
Grade: B-
