The Gonzales family lives in Mexico and lazily runs a tire shop when they can force themselves to get off the couch and stop eating their mother's special tacos. After a strange, white American stumbles into their life with a broken car, and a lot of money, they reluctantly take him in and take advantage of him while he gets in over his head falling for their neighbor who's in an abusive new marriage.
Believe it or not, Los Chidos is actually even more hectic than that description implies. With a Grammy- winning artist for a director, you might expect a taste of something different, and what you get is a whole mouthful of something hard to swallow. From the Spanglish opening song, I knew that I was in for something extreme. Rodriguez Lopez intentionally dubs over the already silly dialogue, making me wonder if something was wrong with my copy. Not long in, I realized that he was just going to be over-the-top the whole way through his feature.
Using a mix of Spanish and English with out of place voices and bright colors, he over exaggerates the stereotypical misogynistic and homophobic Latin American culture with each character in this poor, twisted, ridiculous family. As we see a drunken, abusive, "Catholic" family where each person has their own secret to hide, we get extremely uncomfortable as he violently and gorily paints his satiric vision of his culture.
As a clearly quirky indie film, I was entertained and intrigued at this new and maybe overshot approach to filmmaking. I cringed a bit, but I could not look away, and I'm glad SXSW brings films that will definitely offend some- like this one- to an audience cool enough to appreciate a unique vision. This movie will not work for everyone, but it is worth a watch just to analyze the stylistic choices.
