Cadejo Blanco offers an intriguing look at Guatemalan gang life, but often finds itself distracted from the central plot.
Director: Justin Lerner
Run Time: 125′
UK Release: August 23, 2024
US Release: July 14, 2023
Where to watch: in select UK cinemas; globally on VOD
Cadejo Blanco, written and directed by Justin Lerner, is draped in the trappings of a crime thriller. The central premise is one that has been found in many other movies: a young woman goes undercover in order to search for a missing sister. It’s a tried and true plot, one that is dramatically engaging and suspenseful.
In the beginning, Cadejo Blanco pulls the viewer into its mystery, inviting them to speculate and question, but as the movie continues, it becomes distracted, more interested in the alleyways and corners than the main thoroughfare that the plot had been traveling. As a result of this lack of focus, the movie loses the intensity and urgency that the story requires.
The film is centered around the riveting and precisely modulated performance of Karen Martìnez as Sarita, a stoic, practical young woman living in Guatemala City with her Grandmother and vivacious sister Bea (Pamela Martìnez). After much teasing, Bea convinces Sarita to go clubbing with her. Bea’s boyfriend Andrés (Rudy Rodriquez) tends bar at a local nightclub. Almost as soon as the two sisters arrive, things don’t feel right to Sarita. She notices strange people staring at them from the shadows. When she confronts Bea, a fight begins and Sarita decides to head home early. Bea is not there when Sarita wakes in the morning. Sarita begins a search for her sister, determinedly confronting friends and acquaintances for any information. Her line of questioning leads to a street gang in the coastal town of Puerto Barrios.
It is when Cadejo Blanco moves to Puerto Barrios that things become muddled. As Sarita ingratiates herself with the gang, becoming a member, the focus shifts away from Sarita’s investigation and towards a look at the daily life of a Guatemalan street gang member. An audience member may be forgiven for forgetting that Sarita is searching for a missing sister by the third act. It’s like L’Avventura without Michelangelo Antonioni’s intentionality. Without the narrative scaffolding that Sarita’s investigation provided for Cadejo Blanco the movie flounders, desperately searching for a guiding focal point.
There are images of great power within the movie; characters lurking in the shadows of night clubs, and sudden bursts of violence set against the boredom of daily life. Cinematographer Roman Kasseroller films the movie with the immediacy of a documentary. Oftentimes the shaky hand-held camera will enter a room and pan around, as though it was trying to find the story.
The authenticity extends to the performances. Cadejo Blanco is populated by mainly non-professional actors, people that Lerner met while doing research around Puerto Barrios. Karen Martìnez is one of the few professionals that appears on the screen. Lerner revealed in an interview with Moveable Fest that around 80% of the cast were non-professional actors, playing fictionalized versions of themselves. He worked with the group on the script in order to authentically capture life in Puerto Barrios, encouraging them to improvise and change any lines they felt necessary. The performances in Cadejo Blanco have a translucent, unvarnished quality. Emotional reactions and character beats are expressed without any layer of slick acting tricks.
The mix of reality and melodrama, recalling the neorealist film movement, gives Cadejo Blanco a raw emotional power. Yet, one is left with the sense that there was too much that Lerner wanted to say about life in Puerto Barrios. The plot concerning Sarita’s search for her missing sister gives the movie a solid framework around which to build its depiction of life in Puerto Barrios, and when it steps away from that plot things become muddled and disorganized. Cadejo Blanco works best when it is able to balance together the documentary and the crime thriller.
Cadejo Blanco will be released in in select UK and Irish cinemas and on demand on 23 August, 2024. The film is now available to watch on digital and VOD in the US and more countries.
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