{"id":94665,"date":"2018-11-14T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=94665"},"modified":"2018-11-13T08:41:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T16:41:17","slug":"los-cabos-film-festival-2018-history-lessons-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/los-cabos-film-festival-2018-history-lessons-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Cabos Journal: History Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Marcelino Islas Hern\u00e1ndez&#8217;s strange, affecting film <em>Clases de Historia<\/em> (<em>History Lessons<\/em>) is a darkly comic tale about a teacher&#8217;s burgeoning friendship with a young student. It has elements that draw from the likes of Hal Ashby&#8217;s <em>Harold and Maude<\/em> or Sebasti\u00e1n Lelio&#8217;s <em>Gloria<\/em>, but provides a unique and often powerful story that proves you can have older teachers learn new tricks.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Veteran actor Ver\u00f3nica Langer plays Vero, a history teacher talking of the past to a group of students who seemingly couldn&#8217;t care less about even the present. When the sulky, taciturn Eva (Renata Vaca) shows up in her class, the teacher takes a quiet interest, finding something compelling in the morose teen. After a confrontation leaves them both isolated from the school, the two end up connecting, resulting in a unhealthy but productive co-dependence.<\/p>\n<p>The story has plenty of major swings for both characters as each sucks out some life from the other. Vero&#8217;s hapless husband is kindly but distant, while her children are wrapped in their own issues. Suffering from a quickening of her own mortality, Vero lets loose her inhibitions, finding a guide in Eva&#8217;s anarchistic spirit.<\/p>\n<p>Eva, meanwhile, seeks adult guidance in whatever form she can get, attempting in her own way to ease her self-destruction. The film gains most of its drama through this turmoil, but is most effective thanks to pitch perfect performances by the two leads.<\/p>\n<p>Hern\u00e1ndez manages the tone quite admirably, keeping the characters engaging even when being brittle, brutal or obnoxious. In tiny moments, from the reaching for a remote control to switching sides of bed, the filmmaker finds probing insights into the complacency of relationships and the sublimated desires that one may choose to ignore for a socially acceptable life.<\/p>\n<p>At its core, <em>History Lessons<\/em> is a story about history where the past is actually forgotten, where feelings are buried only surface after the fact. While the ending doesn&#8217;t quite live up to the build-up, the film showcases a prominent Mexican actress at the top of her game and a storyline that speaks to our own reticence to choose happiness over what society considers the way forward. <\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marcelino Islas Hern\u00e1ndez&#8217;s strange, affecting film Clases de Historia (History Lessons) is a darkly comic tale about a teacher&#8217;s burgeoning friendship with a young student. It has elements that draw from the likes of Hal Ashby&#8217;s Harold and Maude or Sebasti\u00e1n Lelio&#8217;s Gloria, but provides a unique and often powerful story that proves you can&#8230;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":94667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4508],"tags":[1234,10453,10448],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94669,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94665\/revisions\/94669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}