Año uña

Who said that one must have a screen play first and then add the images to make a film? How about having visual images first and then thinking about what narrative can build out of the images? Well, the Mexican director Jonás Cuarón's first feature AÑO UÑA is exactly such an experiment. This, however, is not the only refreshing aspect of this film. Unlike other experimental films which can be disturbing, AÑO UÑA demonstrates that an experimental film can simultaneously be light (a love story between a horny teenage Mexican boy Diego and a twenty-something American girl Molly) and personal (Diego is Cuarón's younger half-brother and Molly Cuarón's girlfriend). With thousands of pictures he took during a year of his life but no prewritten script, Cuarón was totally free to compose the narrative. Viewers have to remain patient for the first few minutes (as the film begins slowly with a sequence of his beautifully shot photos) before the story gradually unfolds. By literally imposing a fictional narrative onto reality (spontaneous slices of daily lives), Cuarón's AÑO UÑA makes us rethink the relationship between fabrication and reality. Composed of only photographs and dialogues, AÑO UÑA is probably not considered a film. Strictly it is not a film. It is more than a film, as it offers us an experience of time in a highly intimate and original style. The delightfully funny comments about the cultural differences between America and Mexico as well as about growing up are assets of the film.

Experimental cinema at its best. This is by far one of the freshest Mexican features in recent years. The film is also a very personal journey for Jonas Cuaron. Even though the film might scare some people because it is composed of only pictures and dialog. A coming of age film, that reveals itself photo after photo, and a very funny approach to the Mexican and American cultures. Always charming, almost improvised, the voices are top notch, weird and sometimes distracting, but very intimate indeed. Few flaws in here, more than a movie, it's an experience. I had personally only seen this format previously used by Chris Marker. A very good debut film by Jonas, with only $8,000 dollars as its budget.

9/10 Carlos Reyes, Cine Azteca

Jonás Cuarón seems to find his role as a director in his spectacular debut "Año Uña" (Nail Year), who tells the story about a girl form USA and a boy from Mexico who fall in love during an awful summer. I was really impressed with the movie because it he told the story with a completely original and fresh concept based in only photographs. Such a challenge!... This will not be the first thing we're gonna watch of him, so lets put all eyes on, he have such a great talent! The voice performances of the actors who lead them were astonishing when the main thing to pay attention to is to your ear (very clever). This movie was premiered during the XXII Guadalajara International Film Festival 2007.

I really expected to like this film. I love a lot of foreign cinema; I have a real soft spot for coming-of-age movies; I enjoy slower paced storytelling; and I'm happy to spend time with interesting characters even when there's not a lot happening in a film.

...But I only managed to sit through half of this before I just got so frustrated with it I had to turn it off.

I know that only sitting through half of it doesn't really qualify me to pass comment on the film as a whole, but what I saw was so incredibly tedious that I couldn't bring myself to watch the rest of it. The voice acting was unconvincing, the characters were two dimensional - and not especially likable - and I have to disagree with the other people who have commented and say that I didn't even find the photography especially impressive.

As a project, compiling a year or so of photographs into a sequence that could be presented as a narrative is quite an interesting idea, and this could have been quite a sweet short film. However, there were points where the story that had been attached to the images seemed so lazy and simplistic (it reminded me of Christine Jesperson's art projects in 'Me And You And Everyone We Know' in places), that the final product didn't fulfil it's potential. And I just don't think there was enough to it to justify a feature-length run time.

If you haven't seen the film already, some alternatives I would recommend seeing instead are 'How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer', 'Duck Season' and 'XXY'.

This film is not an original and fresh concept or narrative structure. I don't mean to be picky but facts are facts and originality is hard to quote as BEING. A film called "La Jetee" (1962) is all still images and was the inspiration for the film "Twelve Monkeys" (1995). If you do your research you will find more films using still images instead of moving images.

I have watched "Confession" and thought it was OK. It is a classic student film and one that should be noted as being a good start. I am yet to see "Ano Una" and I look forward to watching it. But please, using the word original is very hard nowadays as there isn't much originality around.