los olvidados (dir. buñuel)

Sitting in the NFT, watching a fifties film about Mexican City street kids, the last thing you anticipate is a shot of the South Bank, filmed from just outside. It's just one of the touches Bunuel throws in to deconstruct what might otherwise have been a regulation docu-drama, the forerunner of so many. The opening shots show Paris, New York and London, before arriving at Mexico City, as the film maker declares a global perspective to this local tale. To watch it in this destabilised era of gun crime is to witness a point made: until the underlying causes of poverty are tackled, the things we are about to witness will continue. Bunuel furthers his perspectivisation with surreal additions. A child rises up out of his own dream to observe on his future. Hens and cocks feature rather more than you'd expect. According to the notes, his plan to feature a full orchestra on an abandoned construction site were shelved, but these touches all help to give Los Olvidados something that lifts it out of the ordinary, in spite of the fact it is so rooted in the ordinary. The old man in Amores Perros crossed my mind. His cinematic ancestor might be the blind folk singer, carting his drum across the wasteland, as cruel as he is kind as he is desperate. Like everyone else in the film. Urban living in Mexico City is probably no easier now than it was then.