Mark Reviews Movies: IDENTIFYING FEATURES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 21, 2021

What happened to her son? That's the only question that matters to Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández), the central figure of the haunting Identifying Features. Is he alive, and if so, where and in what condition is he? Is he dead, and if that's the case, how and why did he die?

Magdalena's search for the answer to this question—the only thing that we know about the character until the film's final minute or so—will take her across Mexico, to places unknown, at least to the audience, and forgotten by everyone but the people who still live or once lived there. Co-writer/director Fernanda Valadez's debut feature (an expansion of her 2014 short "400 Maletas") is a fascinating, troubling, and ultimately devastating examination of modern-day Mexico, seeing the causes, complications, and consequences of immigration to the United States exclusively from the perspective of those who do migrate and, more importantly, those who are left behind.

This is primarily Magdalena's story, but the surprise of this intimate film is how generous Valadez and co-writer Astrid Rondero's screenplay is in terms of offering a wider perspective. The interludes with other characters are sometimes brief or intrinsically connected to Magdalena's journey, but every new perspective, as fleeting as it may be, makes some kind of emotional or thematic impact on this tale.

Some of that is because these stories are so closely related to Magdalena's, even if she never has connected or possesses no reason to connect to these people in any other ordinary circumstance. Some of that is simply the power of Valadez's filmmaking, which combines imagery, language, and silence in such potent ways.

Take, for example, the film's opening sequence, which begins from Magdalena's point of view, watching her teenage son Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) approach the small shack where she and he live—his body framed and obscured by a bar in the window. The boy arrives at the front door to tell his mother that he is leaving the country with a friend, whose relative can get the two jobs in Arizona. Magdalena narrates what happened in this scene and what happened following: She hasn't seen or heard from her son in weeks.

She's actually offering testimony to the local authorities—an unseen face behind a desk. Note how often Valadez hides or completely ignores the faces of people to whom Magdalena or one of these characters is talking. The effect is twofold: We don't need to see these people, who are either unhelpful or hiding some darker secret, and our focus remains steadfastly on the people who really matter in this story—those who have suffered loss, uncertainty, or pain beyond any kind of account.

Offered a book of photos by the anonymous officer, Magdalena roughly flips through the pictures of dead bodies, found recently in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. Hernández's performance is especially strong in these quiet moments. Her turning of the pages suggests a heartbreaking combination of anger, frustration, and helplessness, solely by a simple physical action and the look on her face.

She does not find a photo of Jesús, but she does spot one of her son's friend, whose mother (played by Laura Elena Ibarra) has been avoiding the pictures. This mother knows what happened to her son. Magdalena is left with a different kind of void: not knowing. She makes it her mission to discover the truth, wherever the search may take her and no matter the pain that may come from learning that truth.

From this point, the film veers slightly to a few other journeys, although Magdalena remains involved in all of them. A successful eye doctor named Olivia (Ana Laura Rodríguez) was in Magdalena's position four years ago. She receives a phone call, informing her that the body of her own son, whom she assumed had been dead for years, was found. He died only two weeks ago.

Olivia, who sees Magdalena in the same facility (where discovered bodies or charred remains in bags are constantly brought in and are so plentiful that they have to be stored on shelves in a moving truck), gave up hope. She tells her new and momentary acquaintance, whom Olivia would likely never encounter because of their homes and their socioeconomic distinctions, that Magdalena cannot do that.

Meanwhile, Miguel (David Illescas) is being deported from the United States back to Mexico. He left his small village—one that looks very much like the place where Magdalena comes from, even to the small shack where he and his own mother lived—some time ago and found some kind of life. Now, he's returning home, hoping that the life he once had known is still there.

Paths cross. Magdalena learns of frequent attacks and abductions on the bus routes north, as well as a conspiracy to hide those assaults. Miguel learns that his village has been overrun by a local militia following the murder of the mayor—and each successive one. The searching mother and the deported son make a connection.

Valadez's film is entirely about connections—the one between Magdalena and Miguel, which becomes the focal point, and the ones between Magdalena and those assorted strangers, either evasive or helpful, and the ones we make with these stories, these characters' shared experiences, and these faces of ache and longing. The story, of course, plays as a mystery, with Jesús' fate serving as the narrative's driving force, and Valadez puts forth a series of visual mysteries to accompany and highlight that feeling of uncertainty.

One may be as hypnotically enigmatic as a single shot of a lake, in which we can't tell where the sky begins, where the water ends, and from what angle we're observing the scenery. Another is as eerie and frightening as the story of a survivor of one bus attack, whose account is narrated in an indigenous language without subtitles and shot from his out-of-focus perspective, which imagines one attacker as a demonic figure, engulfed but not consumed by subtly retreating flames. There's a new and different pain to his experience and survival.

Identifying Features is patient, because Magdalena must be and we must feel the weight and pressure of time on this scenario. We do feel it and deeply, too, especially when the truth, as it must and as painful as it perhaps can be, is revealed.

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