{"id":793718,"date":"2026-05-13T15:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793718\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T15:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:27:14","slug":"ashes-review-diego-lunas-disjointed-mexican-immigrant-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793718\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ashes’ Review: Diego Luna’s Disjointed Mexican Immigrant Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDiego Luna<\/a> got his feet wet as a director with the promising 2011 debut,\u00a0Abel<\/a>, a slight but disarming tragicomedy that took imaginative shots at Mexican patriarchy and manhood. He followed in 2014 with the larger-scale\u00a0Cesar Chavez<\/a>, a pedestrian bio-drama that forfeited any shelf life it might have had when evidence accusing the iconic labor unionist of sexual abuse, grooming and rape surfaced earlier this year, all but obliterating his legacy. Next came 2016\u2019s\u00a0Mr. Pig<\/a>, a hog farmer road-trip movie with Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph which I flatly refuse to believe exists.<\/p>\n

\n\tSadly, Luna\u2019s inert fourth feature behind the camera,\u00a0Ashes\u00a0(Ceniza en la Boca), is unlikely to course-correct that faltering trajectory. Based on a well-regarded novel by Brenda Navarro, it\u2019s a wafty character study so stripped down and elliptical that it lacks the connective tissue to hook us into its story or provide emotional access to its characters. The movie seems to want to function as a mood piece \u2014 perhaps something closer to Bing Liu\u2019s haunting narrative debut Preparation for the Next Life<\/a> from last year \u2014 but there\u2019s so little vitality on the screen you start to wonder, \u201cIsn\u2019t being an accomplished actor enough?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAshes\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tPared back to the point of narrative starvation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue<\/strong>: Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)
Cast<\/strong>:\u00a0Anna D\u00edaz, Adriana Paz, Luisa Huertas, Guillermo R\u00edos, Adriana Jacome, Sergio Bautista, Benny Emmanuel, Irene Escolar, Anna Al\u00e1rcon, Dailyn Valdivieso, Charlie Rowe, Laura G\u00f3mez
Director<\/strong>: Diego Luna
Screenwriters<\/strong>: Abia Castillo, Diego Rabasa, Diego Luna, based on the novel\u00a0Ceniza en la boca, by Brenda Navarro
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 39 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPunctuated by clunky whiteouts to signify a change of location, the film\u2019s time frame is often blurry and its setting unclear. Many audiences will spend a third of the run time trying to figure out the characters\u2019 relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie opens with Lucila (Anna D\u00edaz, the sole reason to keep watching) being woken by her mother Isabel (Adriana Paz<\/a>, from Emilia Perez<\/a>), who instructs her to take care of her little brother before disappearing to Spain. Sometime later, Lucila follows Isabel from Mexico<\/a> City to Madrid, with her brother Diego (Sergio Bautista) in tow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tForced to support the family, Lucila finds work as a nanny, looking after the infant son of a rude, bossy architect (Irene Escolar), while also assuming responsibility for her own increasingly difficult brother Diego (Sergio Bautista), who risks explusion from school if he keeps hitting classmates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tImpulsively, Lucila follows her friend Jimena (Laura G\u00f3mez) to Barcelona in pursuit of independence. She gets herself an English musician boyfriend (Charlie Rowe), while hiding the fact that she does elder-care work and food deliveries from him. Feeling left behind by their neglectful mother and abandoned by his big sister, Diego turns up in Barcelona, but after a disagreement, he tells Lucila that despite all her criticisms of Isabel, she has become just like her.<\/p>\n

\n\tThings deteriorate for Lucila when she\u2019s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of her shared apartment, but her world completely crumbles when she gets a call informing her of a tragic death in the family. Ignoring her stricken mother\u2019s advice, Lucila decides to go back to Mexico City to mourn with her grandparents (Luisa Huertas and Guillermo R\u00edos) and other relatives, sneaking the deceased loved one\u2019s ashes into her backpack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThese are some of the film\u2019s most touching scenes, when Lucila perhaps feels more like she\u2019s part of a family than she has in years. Despite a mentality forged by military service, her abuelo is kind and affectionate, while her straight-shooting abuela gives her the explanation she\u2019s long been denied for her mother\u2019s abandonment, without sugar-coating it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis concluding stretch also explains \u2014 more literally than emotionally \u2014 the original title of Navarro\u2019s novel,\u00a0Ash in the Mouth. But the impression throughout is of a complex work of fiction distilled down to broad-strokes plot machinations, to the exclusion of meaningful character insight. It\u2019s a movie that manages to be both intimate and uninvolving, though that\u2019s no fault of the very capable actors. Perhaps it was chopped up in the edit in a bid to push the story forward, while inadertently gutting it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screenplay barely touches on some of what would appear to have been important themes, or at least vivid background texture, in the book. The stigmatization of Mexican immigrants, treated by the Spanish as cultural and class inferiors, is limited to the curt disdain of one nightmare employer, or to Lucila on the street in Barcelona contemplating a flyer for an accelerated Catalan language course.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe crime and socioeconomic factors driving Mexicans to seek opportunities abroad are articulated only in a chaotic nighttime scene in which a gang declaring itself in graffiti to be \u201cThe New School\u201d terrorizes the peaceful neighborhood where Lucila\u2019s grandparents live. We are left to assume this is a drug cartel making its menacing presence felt.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, the most effective moments are those in which we observe Lucila showing genuine affection for the people in her care \u2014 rolling on a bed laughing with a happy baby or tenderly bathing a Spanish family\u2019s neglected grandmother. But the movie lacks fluidity; its fussily fragmented approach ultimately just leaves us with pieces that don\u2019t add up to much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Luna got his feet wet as a director with the promising 2011 debut,\u00a0Abel, a slight but disarming…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":793719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[323922,6345,297566,49625,323923,11172,171,2222,53,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-793718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-adriana-paz","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","tag-diego-luna","tag-entertainment","tag-mexico","tag-movies","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}