THE STORY – Lucila leaves Mexico with her younger brother to reunite with their mother in Madrid, who had left a few years earlier to chase a better future. When they finally arrive, the bitter, suffocating reality that awaits them proves far harsher than Lucila had imagined. Still, she is determined to make the most of this fragile new life.
THE CAST – Anna Diáz, Adriana Paz & Irene Escolar
THE TEAM – Diego Luna (Director/Writer), Abia Castillo & Diego Rabasa (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 102 Minutes
“Ashes,” a well-intentioned immigrant drama from actor-turned-director Diego Luna. Based on the acclaimed 2022 novel by Brenda Navarro, the fourth feature from Luna has a superb lead performance, but the story often feels flat and disconnected. There’s sincerity in its attempt to explore generational trauma, displacement, and the lingering effects of abandonment while still trying to carve out a life for yourself. Still, the material rarely develops those ideas with the level of depth or urgency the story demands. As a result, the film often feels emotionally muted when it should be devastating.
The film begins in Mexico City, where Lucila (Anna Diaz) is awakened by her mother, Isabel (Adriana Paz, from “Emilia Pérez”), who instructs her to take care of her little brother Diego (Sergio Bautista) before jumping in a taxi and disappearing from their lives, to the evident anger of Lucila’s father. Several years later, Lucila and Diego have moved to Madrid and reconnected with Isabel, though her new life is scarcely an improvement, other than the lack of an abusive husband. Thereafter, Lucila follows her friend Jimena (Laura Gomez) to Barcelona, where she meets an English musician (Charlie Rowe) and lies to him about being a student, rather than revealing that she’s an au pair and a food delivery driver. Then, a family tragedy forces a return to Mexico City, where Lucila reconnects with her grandparents (Luisa Huertas and Guillermo Rios) and finally receives answers to her burning questions about her mother’s initial abandonment.
Anna Diaz (who made a splash in Berlin with Alonso Ruizpalacio’s “La Cocina” in 2024) is unquestionably the main reason to see “Ashes.” She has an extremely expressive, cinematic face, delivering a radiant performance that commands your attention, even if the script and story fall flat. The supporting roles are less successful, largely because the characters are so thinly sketched in the script. In fairness, Laura Gomez stands out as Jimena, but that is largely due to her cheerfully sex-obsessed dialogue, as she basically tells Lucila that she’s moving to Barcelona because the men are hotter there. Less fortunate is Adriana Paz, as Isabel, who is never properly fleshed out as a character and remains an enigmatic figure on the margins of the story. It would be tempting to see this as a deliberate decision on Luna’s part, aimed at keeping her as a vaguely drawn figure because that’s how Lucila sees her, too, except that Sergio Bautista is just as thinly sketched as Diego, and his relationship with Lucila is much closer, since she has effectively raised him since childhood.
That presents a problem later in the film, as Diego is clearly troubled – getting into fights at school, locking himself in the bathroom, that sort of thing – but his story barely registers, so the emotional impact of his eventual fate is significantly lessened, since he has so little screen time. Charlie Mowe is also bafflingly underwritten as Lucila’s boyfriend. We get hardly any details about their relationship (we don’t see them meet, we don’t see them split up, etc.), so it’s impossible to invest in that particular story element. It also doesn’t really make sense that Lucila would attempt to pretend she was a student. As a musician (who doesn’t appear to be that successful), he is hardly any better off than she is, socially speaking. In the end, Mowe’s character seems to exist purely for the sequence in which Lucila has to hide from him when she delivers food to their apartment, and this scene never really rings true, especially if we are supposed to assume that they split up as a result.
An additional problem is that the film fails to distinguish among the three locations: suburban Madrid looks identical to suburban Barcelona, which in turn looks identical to suburban Mexico City. Again, perhaps this was a deliberate decision, intended to reflect that Lucila’s life of drudgery remains the same wherever she is, but either way, it makes for a drab, uninteresting viewing experience. The audience has to pay close attention to the script even to realize she’s moved in the first place. In the end, it’s difficult to see what appealed to Luna about Navarro’s novel in the first place, as this feels like a largely unremarkable story that doesn’t really say all that much about the immigrant experience. Worse, the story elements that should have been brought to the fore are effectively marginalized, dramatically lessening any potential emotional impact. On a technical level, Damian Garcia’s cinematography is, like the film itself, at its strongest when tightly focused on Diaz and her expressive face, often in close-up. Similarly, Raquel Garcia-Thomas’ score is fine, but considering one of the characters is an actual musician, it’s a little odd that there’s no musical sequence to show him at work.
“Ashes” confirms Diego Luna’s skill as a director of actors, as his collaboration with Anna Diaz delivers a memorable and compelling central performance. Still, the story is badly let down by an unfocused, ultimately unsatisfying script. Despite its strong thematic foundation and obvious compassion for its characters, the film never fully comes alive dramatically, leaving behind a frustrating sense of a richer, possibly more resonant story buried somewhere beneath the surface.
