!Que Viva México!: Reygadas as Documentarian

Abstract

With a concept in hand, what is named “altered states of embodiment” in the first chapter, this chapter studies the ethical and political significance of Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux and, in minor ways, his three other feature films. The avant-garde approach and documentary aesthetics converge to generate Reygadas’s critiques of class relations and sexual difference. Principally, the director’s preoccupation with sexual difference manifests itself in a sex-dream sequence. Although the director has offered comments about class and race depictions in all of his films, he has said little about gender, gender roles, sexuality, and sexual difference. The work in this chapter will fill in this blank. Post Tenebras Lux presents the ever-increasing incongruity between contemporary life and traditional marriage. Marriage is now an unviable and unhealthy option for many individuals, and accordingly, the couple in the film struggle with “compulsory monogamy” in a sexual epoch much more diverse than heterosexual, monogamous sex permits. The author engages Bill Nichols’s documentary film theory to assess Reygadas’s critiques and his style. Reygadas employs the profilmic event as a stylistic device. The chapter continues the work on Reygadas as documentarian by providing a close reading of the people, animals, and even CGI characters displayed, with a heightened emphasis on the profilmic event. The aesthetic choice to present the creatures in this manner is in the service of narrative, the film’s critiques, and its efforts in formulating concepts such as human–animal relations and representations of fictionalized death.