Discreet

When you watch a movie that makes you shudder, gives you goosebumps, or makes you want to never watch another frame, there is no logical reason to say it is a bad film. And even less so when it is an excellent film as Travis Mathews's «Discreet.» There were even moments when I felt like I was watching a horror movie, but no, it was a realistic and devastating drama.

"Discreet" takes place during the years of Donald Trump's "narcissistic dictatorship." It tells the story of Alex (Mars), an aimless man who records videos on American highways and roads to send them to a Japanese woman (Okatsuka), host of a space for emotional well-being and mental health on social networks. Alex intends to reach Oregon and meet her, but on his journey, he stops at the house of his mother Joy (Cunningham), a drug addict in rehabilitation who reveals to him a secret she kept for decades: the man who abused him when he was a child is not dead, as he was led to believe.

The events that occur during the following 69 minutes (after some sordid events that precede them, related to that child abuse and, at the same time, alien to it) constitute Alex's revenge, set in the universe of a marginalized social sector far from the "American dream" and its followers, but as prone to crime as the privileged people of the socioeconomic, political and military structures.

I think that, as in the case of «Saló or the 120 days of Sodom» in 1975, the public was not prepared for "Discreet" in 2017, and the film sank into anonymity... at least I never heard of it. Apparently, American audiences are not yet convinced, as they give it a low rating. To me, that is an eloquent fact that speaks to the power of the film. Whatever they say, I highly recommend it, with the warning that some may find it offensive.