Jorge Michel Grau’s debut feature about a hungry Mexican family is a tasty little treat
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (SOMOS LE QUE HAY) (Jorge Michel Grau, 2010)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 18
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.ifccenter.com
There’s an old saying “You are what you eat,” and it couldn’t be more true of the protagonist family in Mexican writer-director Jorge Michel Grau’s debut feature, We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay). A veteran of both the Cannes and New York Film Festivals, the creepy horror flick begins as a decrepit old man wanders through a mall, apparently drunk and sick. After dropping dead on the street, his body is quickly whisked away as if just another piece of trash, but when the medical examiner finds part of a finger inside the man’s body, a pair of corrupt cops are on the case. Meanwhile, the dead man’s wife, daughter, and two sons are really, really hungry, because Daddy was the one who always brought home the bacon, so to speak, which they would devour in ritualistic ceremonies. But now they’re bickering over who should be the hunter, where they should do their hunting, and how they should prepare their potential victims. With the cops closing in, the family’s in-fighting isn’t helping as the body count, including a fair amount of blood and gore, begins to rise. Starring Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitán, and Carmen Beato, We Are What We Are is a tasty little treat that is no mere flavor-of-the-moment vampiric rip-off but an admirable homage to late-night Brava/Argento fare, with some social commentary thrown in for good measure.