Que Viva México (Long Live Mexico) - film

 Que Viva México (Long Live Mexico) – A Savage Satire on Mexican Society

Que Viva México is one of the best Mexican films I have seen recently. This 2023 film is a dark, crude and biting satire on Mexican society, politics, corruption, racism, class divisions, poverty and culture.

Pancho, a successful middle-class Mexican living in the city, returns to his rural hometown with his wife and children after learning that his grandfather has died and left him an inheritance.

What begins as a family reunion becomes a chaotic struggle over money, property and power. His relatives represent different aspects of Mexican society, exposing its contradictions, prejudices and inequalities.

The dialogues are colourful, pungent and sharp, often laced with vulgarity and abuse. The characters and their actions are exaggerated, sometimes outrageously so. But this excess makes the satire even more powerful and entertaining.

I particularly enjoyed watching the grandmother, whose candid, cruel and politically incorrect comments, delivered with a generous dose of vulgarity, are hilarious. She spares nobody.

My favourite Mexican actor, Damián Alcazar, is at his best, portraying the affectionate father, the greedy crook and the domineering patriarch of a large rural family. His performance is admirable and enjoyable.

The film takes a dig at the Fourth Transformation, the political project proclaimed by Mexico's leftist President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador ( affectionately addressed as AMLO) who pursued policies against corruption and champion the poor and indigenous communities.

One of the most biting political satires is the portrayal of Pancho's uncle, a local politician who has switched his allegiance from the PRI to the PAN and finally to Morena, the party of AMLO. He enthusiastically praises AMLO's Fourth Transformation and its promises to eradicate corruption and protect the poor. Yet he shamelessly demands bribes and grabs the properties of poor villagers. 

AMLO was not amused. He dismissed the film as a churro (junk) and accused it of pandering to conservative audiences. 

The director, Luis Estrada, is a master of political satire. I had enjoyed his earlier films La ley de Herodes (Herod's Law) and La dictadura perfecta (The Perfect Dictatorship), which also expose the absurdities, contradictions and corruption of Mexican politics.

Watching Que Viva México reminded me of the great Mexican comedies of Cantinflas in the 1950s. But while Cantinflas made audiences laugh at the absurdities of society with his wit and verbal acrobatics, Estrada makes them laugh, squirm and sometimes recoil at the ugliness beneath the surface. It is a long film running for 

Long Live Mexico is a long film running for more than three hours, like most Indian films. It is  loud, vulgar and outrageous. But beneath all the laughter and abuse lies a serious and uncomfortable portrait of Mexico. It shows the courage and humorous spirit of the Mexicans to laugh at themselves.