Juan, the young, entrepreneurial sixteen year-old who seems intent on making this family business a legit one, tells the camera over and over again that he doesn’t understand why people (including the police in several instances) wouldn’t just agree to be helped and pay them in turn. Government ambulances aren’t showing up and they’re just trying to make a living. Why would people be concerned with their legality or their expenses at times when their lives are literally on the line? He doesn’t get it. It’s obvious that Lorentzen does. Moreover, the Connecticut-born director nudges us to consider both the system that’s allowed these kinds of services to pop up in such a populous city, as well as the one that’s left Juan and his family with few other opportunities to thrive.
Lorentzen’s filmmaking is unfussy and near-surgical in its precision. At times it’s as thrilling as any action movie, at others as quiet as an intimate family drama. He balances reckless car chase scenes on nighttime streets where dueling ambulances try to be the “first” on the scene with gentler moments at the furniture-less home. That he doesn’t crowd the movie with talking heads or factoids about Mexican health care, speaks to his desire to merely document and observe. He offers up the Ochoas and their behavior and invites us to make our own judgments. Hard to watch, with an unspoken message that’s even harder to swallow, Midnight Family is an unflinching look at a broken system and the unseemly choices people make to merely survive.
https://remezcla.com/features/film/sundance-review-midnight-family-documentary/
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