The plot ...??? what plot? Discussing it after its screening last night, my friends and I decided that there was no plot, just some weak sub-plots. They are all over the shop. The race issue is brushed upon but it is not dealt with in any depth. As is said above, I don't mind a film about nothing if at least it is entertaining, but unfortunately this one fails at that too. There seems to just be little incidents with random dialogue in between. It just isn't consistent. Many things are hinted at but most are not fully expressed. I didn't care about what happened to the characters, there was never enough detail for any of them. In the end I felt I'd have enjoyed watching a party I'd filmed on my phone instead. Come on Gael, we know you can do better than that! :)
11 Reviews
Your eyes and ears will BLEED!
soropo3126 October 2007
Some films are so bad, they're good. Meaning "fun" or "entertaining" or at least "interesting"... But few films can claim to be so dreadful, you actually feel physical pain while viewing them. So bad are these damned few that you don't experience them or watch them: you "endure" them. This is the mother of all such films! "Deficit" is without a doubt the most inept and atrociously awful film ever made. Its poorness is so extreme that of itself it is the film's strongest selling emphasis. The script is non-existent, the acting makes Steven Seagal look like a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the editing could have less horrendously botched by a blind Eskimo with no arms. It is also painfully slow. this film makes its approximately 70 minute running time and make you feel like you've aged ten years. That's what makes a film truly bad: the fact that despite its overbearing weaknesses it isn't even entertaining!
Where García Bernal was still wet behind the ears when first working with some of Mexico's top directorial talent; here, he has created a strong and involving piece himself.
johnnyboyz2 September 2010
In Déficit, predominant Mexican actor Gael García Bernal directs a relatively bold; rather disturbing and ultimately despairing look at youth. Here is a film set in its own closed off world of hedonism, drug use and burning antagonism ready to explode; a world we are gradually invited to believe was brought about illegitimately by the adult owners whom are away; a world we begin outside of but are eerily brought into through the main gates whilst systematically welcomed by a drawing of a huge phallus. The Eden that has been created here is being misused; the apples on the trees are ripening and various characters are ominously eyeing up the juiciness of the supposed fruit. Where once the man was at the forefront of whatever Mexican New Wave you wish to state arose at the beginning of the 2000s, the star of such films as Love's a Bitch and And Your Mother Too, is now at the forefront of his own piece as a director and lead actor. If Déficit is the result of said New Wave, a creation of a text by those either working on or inspired by the films of said period, then it can only really be a good thing.
It is indeed García Bernal's character Cristobal around whom we predominantly follow, a young man; a popular man and into all those things a young, popular man shouldn't be. He is hosting a lavish get together with his sister; her friends and his at the large house his parents own in a secluded part of Mexico up in the hills, naturally, while they're both away. On the back-burner is an impeding acceptance into a top university; the legal problems his parents are facing as they remain away from the property, communication of which is punctuated by nervous phone calls from the mother, and Cristobal's lost girlfriend whom is on her way but keeps ringing for directions at certain times. The scene is set, and very early on, after most of the friends have arrived and a degree of hostility with his sister is established, one of the guests tries to pick up a vase which belongs to the household to which Cristobal will beg the offender not to interfere. That sense of something very delicate, which will take a long time to mend, being casually smashed to pieces by way of an accident or otherwise becomes prominent; that sense of impending doom and consequent clean up operation at which Cristobal will most probably have to take responsibility, becomes prominent. The characters are on a constant knife edge in what they do and how they act; surely it's just a matter of time before tempers fray and something regretful happens.
The film makes a point to make a chief study out of a character named Adnan, a live in gardener-come-worker for Cristobal's household. Adnan is a part of a seemingly normalised, even perfect, family unit in that he is with his mother; father and little sister. Unlike those they work for, the parents of this unit work with morals and operate within the fields of good, clean and honest hard work and whom keep a stern eye on their young; something in binary opposition to Cristobal's whom are away fighting legal issues for apparent corruption and whose actions of such will lead to everything that transpires to their own young during the night of the get-together. In Adnan, the spying of a young Argentinian girl named Dolores (Cipriota) who has been invited to the party kicks off a more direct, more physical conflict with Cristobal when it transpires he has an eye for her as well; Cristobal's own dispiriting tactics seeing him seemingly providing his girlfriend Mafer with false directions so as to be able to buy time and get closer to Dolores. The proximity of these people, their actions and people like Dolores is having a dangerous, negative affect on those seemingly 'uncorrupt' in and around the area.
The manner in which Cristobal and Adnan share a gaze for Dolores links these two people of wildly differing 'sorts' in ways that was previously a far cry from happening, Adnan's arc evolving, negatively, as the attraction to Dolores and apparent allurement towards the sorts of activity playing out on the grounds grows, eventually leading to what happens during the film's climax. The film avoids being barely anything more than a mere author's fantasy, painting a crass and alienating image of both genders on screen whilst systematically demonising the actions of either gender gradually and methodically rather provide us with a false epiphany tacked on at the end. This is not an hour and a half or so of gratuity and stupefying attitudes towards the opposite sex before a little five minute 'bit' at the end telling us that "all of the above is really bad, and ought not be done."
Where, usually American based and orientated, films with similar traits paint sympathetic portraits of central males chasing women, whom the text usually renders no more than a prize, despite them being pig-headed, moronic and ultimately female hating; Déficit alienates us from most of the male characters and their actions, instead using the character of Adnan for the aforementioned purposes. The women are granted an equally negative representation and are far from the passive, flat footed, prize-angelic archetypes the film could have rendered them with García Bernal going some way to have us dislike everybody rather than take sides in a plight of either misogyinic or misandric sorts. Ultimately and most importantly, there is a tinge of regret when certain characters realise they should've spent what was essentially a 'last supper' scenario with their friends a little more constructively, given the events that transpire which have future off screen ramifications, than what they did. Déficit is a nicely constructed but quite terrifying dramatisation of this; one García Bernal pulls off.
It is indeed García Bernal's character Cristobal around whom we predominantly follow, a young man; a popular man and into all those things a young, popular man shouldn't be. He is hosting a lavish get together with his sister; her friends and his at the large house his parents own in a secluded part of Mexico up in the hills, naturally, while they're both away. On the back-burner is an impeding acceptance into a top university; the legal problems his parents are facing as they remain away from the property, communication of which is punctuated by nervous phone calls from the mother, and Cristobal's lost girlfriend whom is on her way but keeps ringing for directions at certain times. The scene is set, and very early on, after most of the friends have arrived and a degree of hostility with his sister is established, one of the guests tries to pick up a vase which belongs to the household to which Cristobal will beg the offender not to interfere. That sense of something very delicate, which will take a long time to mend, being casually smashed to pieces by way of an accident or otherwise becomes prominent; that sense of impending doom and consequent clean up operation at which Cristobal will most probably have to take responsibility, becomes prominent. The characters are on a constant knife edge in what they do and how they act; surely it's just a matter of time before tempers fray and something regretful happens.
The film makes a point to make a chief study out of a character named Adnan, a live in gardener-come-worker for Cristobal's household. Adnan is a part of a seemingly normalised, even perfect, family unit in that he is with his mother; father and little sister. Unlike those they work for, the parents of this unit work with morals and operate within the fields of good, clean and honest hard work and whom keep a stern eye on their young; something in binary opposition to Cristobal's whom are away fighting legal issues for apparent corruption and whose actions of such will lead to everything that transpires to their own young during the night of the get-together. In Adnan, the spying of a young Argentinian girl named Dolores (Cipriota) who has been invited to the party kicks off a more direct, more physical conflict with Cristobal when it transpires he has an eye for her as well; Cristobal's own dispiriting tactics seeing him seemingly providing his girlfriend Mafer with false directions so as to be able to buy time and get closer to Dolores. The proximity of these people, their actions and people like Dolores is having a dangerous, negative affect on those seemingly 'uncorrupt' in and around the area.
The manner in which Cristobal and Adnan share a gaze for Dolores links these two people of wildly differing 'sorts' in ways that was previously a far cry from happening, Adnan's arc evolving, negatively, as the attraction to Dolores and apparent allurement towards the sorts of activity playing out on the grounds grows, eventually leading to what happens during the film's climax. The film avoids being barely anything more than a mere author's fantasy, painting a crass and alienating image of both genders on screen whilst systematically demonising the actions of either gender gradually and methodically rather provide us with a false epiphany tacked on at the end. This is not an hour and a half or so of gratuity and stupefying attitudes towards the opposite sex before a little five minute 'bit' at the end telling us that "all of the above is really bad, and ought not be done."
Where, usually American based and orientated, films with similar traits paint sympathetic portraits of central males chasing women, whom the text usually renders no more than a prize, despite them being pig-headed, moronic and ultimately female hating; Déficit alienates us from most of the male characters and their actions, instead using the character of Adnan for the aforementioned purposes. The women are granted an equally negative representation and are far from the passive, flat footed, prize-angelic archetypes the film could have rendered them with García Bernal going some way to have us dislike everybody rather than take sides in a plight of either misogyinic or misandric sorts. Ultimately and most importantly, there is a tinge of regret when certain characters realise they should've spent what was essentially a 'last supper' scenario with their friends a little more constructively, given the events that transpire which have future off screen ramifications, than what they did. Déficit is a nicely constructed but quite terrifying dramatisation of this; one García Bernal pulls off.
Some affluent Mexican youths spend a "lost weekend"
hglr23 June 2008
I just saw this film at the International Film Festival in Provincetown, Mass., where the audience response was tepid to say the least. In short, the film is an astonishing mess -- plot less, desultory, self-indulgent, full of missed opportunities. The director and star of the movie, Gael Garcia Bernal, was there to talk about the film and answer questions after the showing. Tellingly -- but reassuringly -- he spent most of his time apologizing for the film, which he clearly realized is a disaster. That's the reassuring part: he confided that this was a first effort which started as essentially an "acting experiment" and only later took the form of a feature film. To say that this movie somehow gets at class divisions in Mexico is to give it way too much credit. It's mostly about a bunch of spoiled, nasty rich kids who could just as easily have been dropping pills and whooping it up anywhere in the U.S. or Europe. As for the missed opportunity, the one facet of potential interest in the movie is the main character, who's clearly a troubled young man with secrets and lies in his past. But what are they? Here's a young man with looks and wealth and friends to spare, but there's something about him that the movie isn't telling us. We keep expecting to find out, but alas we never do.
good first movie
cinesphere14 September 2007
I'm shocked that 195 reviewers (so far) have given this film an average under 4. I saw it today at the Toronto Film Festival and it was extremely well received.
On the surface, this is the story of a house party in Mexico. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Cristobel, a rich young man at a turning point in his life. He is trying to deal with other people's expectations for him, and his own wishes.
Although it isn't plot intensive, it does effectively portray class/racial divide in Mexican society.
Gael, Luz and the writer were at the screening. In fact, Gael has been at almost everything in town and has really shown himself to be a wonderfully warm, intelligent and sociable person. He is the sort of actor/director we always hope to encounter - he's promoting his film and himself and having a great time doing it. It's a refreshing change from the other too-busy, too- cool crew that miss screenings even when they are in town.
Interesting film; great job by Gael and team.
On the surface, this is the story of a house party in Mexico. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Cristobel, a rich young man at a turning point in his life. He is trying to deal with other people's expectations for him, and his own wishes.
Although it isn't plot intensive, it does effectively portray class/racial divide in Mexican society.
Gael, Luz and the writer were at the screening. In fact, Gael has been at almost everything in town and has really shown himself to be a wonderfully warm, intelligent and sociable person. He is the sort of actor/director we always hope to encounter - he's promoting his film and himself and having a great time doing it. It's a refreshing change from the other too-busy, too- cool crew that miss screenings even when they are in town.
Interesting film; great job by Gael and team.
DEFICIT: worst film ever
lem-cmg2 June 2008
I'm very disappointed about this film, I actually expected something from Gael García, but I can say that without question is the worst film I ever watched: - There is no plot at all - The characters are very weak - The direction is awful, even Gael as an actor performs very bad - Edition & Cinematography are below an acceptable film - The difference between social classes in the film is not clear and it doesn't exist at all, in Mexico we can consider all the characters in the film from the same social class (only different life-style)
After watching it, you'll get the feeling that you were watching a home video of one of your so-so parties, because even most real-world parties are a lot more fun and interesting than this film.
Hopefully Gael will perform better in his next work.
After watching it, you'll get the feeling that you were watching a home video of one of your so-so parties, because even most real-world parties are a lot more fun and interesting than this film.
Hopefully Gael will perform better in his next work.
DEFICIT: An interesting observation of the class system in Mexico, through a 20 somethings' eyes.
laurenasmus8 November 2007
I think this film was a great 'fly on the wall' experience. It was like the Mexican version of 'KIDS', only not as explicit and depressing.
They basically showed what was going on in a young Mexican man's life through a party at his house. But here is the point. The lead character, Cristobal, is upper class and it focused on his interactions with a childhood friend, who is also his family's grounds-keeper/ servant. How often do we see this side of Mexican daily life? This movie evoked more sympathy for the struggle required for a Mexican in his homeland AND abroad.
The filmmakers made this movie and put Gael in the drivers seat to show a Mexico that we have never experienced in a film. It takes us from ignorance to appreciation. You see this very trendy/hot-now actor in, what is perhaps, his real environment. Although I am not sure he is that racist, I feel that putting us in his shoes for a bit really makes us take a step back and think twice before judging a huge part of our population that is really making a positive impact here in America.
The motive behind making this movie was to show what goes on in Mexico, where they come from. I am a Programmer for a Film Festival, and I have had to watch some really horrible stuff. For me, this was a breath of fresh air. More of a learning experience.
Thanks, L
They basically showed what was going on in a young Mexican man's life through a party at his house. But here is the point. The lead character, Cristobal, is upper class and it focused on his interactions with a childhood friend, who is also his family's grounds-keeper/ servant. How often do we see this side of Mexican daily life? This movie evoked more sympathy for the struggle required for a Mexican in his homeland AND abroad.
The filmmakers made this movie and put Gael in the drivers seat to show a Mexico that we have never experienced in a film. It takes us from ignorance to appreciation. You see this very trendy/hot-now actor in, what is perhaps, his real environment. Although I am not sure he is that racist, I feel that putting us in his shoes for a bit really makes us take a step back and think twice before judging a huge part of our population that is really making a positive impact here in America.
The motive behind making this movie was to show what goes on in Mexico, where they come from. I am a Programmer for a Film Festival, and I have had to watch some really horrible stuff. For me, this was a breath of fresh air. More of a learning experience.
Thanks, L
It is a very realistic film
aazawadzki22 September 2008
This movie had a lot of unsaid desperation festering under the guises of a weekend party. The constant presence of fireworks going off in the background was the score to the film - I kept expecting them to turn into gunshots. Social upheaval among the poor is very much a reality in Mexico, there are so many poor people there, yet there is also a growing middle class - and an immensely wealthy upper class. To be poor but to see wealth all around you - springing up in very fancy malls, nice cars, immaculate hotels - yet to not really be welcome in this part of society - well it can only lead to anger, or to a feeling of impotence and hopelessness. What was interesting was the duality present in the movie - both the wealthy son and the poor maintenance worker shared many of the same emotions throughout the film, especially at the end.
The way the people talked at the party - in particular, how they referred to the poor - was really accurate. There is kindness and respect on the surface, but among the upper classes there is this undercurrent of racism that rears its ugly head every now and then. It took courage for a Mexican to make this film. None of the characters are portrayed with much sympathy - they are what they are. Even the maintenance workers and housekeeping staff have faults.
The English translation was not that good, then again all of the joking around in the movie is difficult to translate. Regardless, my wife was laughing throughout the movie.
I think that there is a seed of greatness in this film which will become more fully realized in this gifted director's future movies.
The way the people talked at the party - in particular, how they referred to the poor - was really accurate. There is kindness and respect on the surface, but among the upper classes there is this undercurrent of racism that rears its ugly head every now and then. It took courage for a Mexican to make this film. None of the characters are portrayed with much sympathy - they are what they are. Even the maintenance workers and housekeeping staff have faults.
The English translation was not that good, then again all of the joking around in the movie is difficult to translate. Regardless, my wife was laughing throughout the movie.
I think that there is a seed of greatness in this film which will become more fully realized in this gifted director's future movies.
My kind of movie :)
emilia_isabelle10 May 2009
I think Gael did a great job. I was surprised by how good the story was, even though it didn't have a conventional "feel" with a defined beginning, middle, and end, it kept me interested throughout. I think since I am from Mexico I was able to get all the subtleties, too. I was expecting something very raw, like some movies he's done before, or maybe something that was shocking just for the sake of being shocking, but this was just refreshing, interesting, contemporary and thought-provoking. I'm still thinking about the whole class issue and how some things seem unavoidable depending on where you grew up... Thank you Gael!!!
If you like social observations
alebs530 June 2019
This movie divides audiences because some people like traditional film making while others are more open to other styles. I honestly think is a good film, observational and with the intention to focus on the classism and racism in Mexican society. If you expect a lineal traditional plot and are not interested in subtle social commentary then this film is not for you. Also, there's a lot lost in translation which at times can make the dialogues tedious for non Spanish speakers. Definitely a movie for world cinema lovers.
a critical view of Mexico social interactions
csainz7 June 2008
I found this movie stimulating. It is true that the themes that the movie touches are touched lightly but enough you make them evident, Gael made an accurate portrait of Mexican upper class. I also believe he made the decision not to make things obvious, and I found that decision to be correct, it would make the film feel artificial for Mexican viewers, and I believe the movie is targeted precisely for Mexican viewers. The movie doesn't explain things to you with apples, and that's where its beauty is. The lack of interest of the upper class towards anything other than its own lives is patent from the very start of the film, we see the main character go thru what seems to be a local group of protesters without ever wondering why are they there... they're just an obstruction on his way. The everyday interactions with the lower class is depicted with delicacy and accuracy. There are some goofs in the film, but over all, a very interesting film. Mexico needs this kind of films that are critical to the status quo, that invite to reflection, instead of the inertial film making that leads towards telenovelas kind of stories. I would love to see more filming of this kind being done in Mexico. It is unnecessary to say that many people will come to see this film because of Gael, and that is a good thing because many of those would not have seen it otherwise, even if the message is not obvious the denunciation is there.
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