Club Sandwich is a small film. It’s a film that typically finds a receptive audience at festivals, and I hope that it’s picked up and able to do the rounds at any independent cinema near you. If it does, give it a watch.
Maria Renee Prudencio and Lucio Gimenez Caho play a mother and son, respectively, who are enjoying a lazy holiday in the sunshine at a quiet hotel resort. The resort is quiet because it’s off-season, which allowed a few people to make good use of a promotion. The weather is gorgeous, the pool is blissfully peaceful, and there’s nothing to cause any stress during their holiday. Into this temporary idyll comes a young woman (Danae Reynaud) who catches the eye of the young boy. The two want to spend some time alone together, but that proves to be quite difficult, despite the resort being so quiet.
Writer-director Fernando Eimbcke has taken this slight premise and created something wonderful around it. The casting of Prudencio and Caho helps a lot, with the former looking younger than her years and the latter able to look slightly older than the fifteen that he’s supposed to be. During the opening scenes, it’s hard to determine their relationship, and you start to wonder whether or not the film is going to take a dark and twisted path. Danae Reynaud is also very good in her role, changing the whole dynamic of the movie and adding a tension and awkwardness that comes hand in hand with two curious teenagers snatching time together.
Taking some moments that could upset viewers of a sensitive nature (such as the son relieving himself with secretive masturbation . . . . . . . . well, it’s rarely something done out in the open), Eimbcke handles everything with great care. The scenes that stand out are those in the second half of the movie, when Reynaud enters their lives, but every scene proves to be a pleasure. As the sun shines down and the pool shimmers invitingly, it’s all too easy to feel the heat and recognise that perfect holiday laziness, which then makes it easier to identify with a young man struggling to contain his overactive hormones in such an environment. Mind you, that may be because I’m an adult male, and most of us adult males are temporarily stuck in that state once we reach it.
Maybe not quite up there with the very best movies from Mexico, Club Sandwich certainly deserves to be discovered and savoured by fans of world cinema. Small, but almost perfectly formed.
WRITER/DIRECTOR: FERNANDO EIMBCKE
STARS: MARIA RENEE PRUDENCIO, LUCIO GIMENEZ CACHO, DANAE REYNAUD
RUNTIME: 82 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: MEXICO
Film Rating: 
