FilmReview

Cadejo Blanco

Reviewer: Jane Darcy

Writer and Director: Justin Lerner

The back story to Justin Lerner’s film, Cadejo Blanco, is fascinating. Lerner spent over three years researching street gangs in Guatamala, interviewing kids and gradually putting together a story in collaboration with them, casting several non-professionals as characters.

It’s a shocking story of a culture that flourishes in the country’s poorest areas. Children and teenagers are lured into small gangs, usually run by one or more older men, doing the dirty work but considered completely expendible. “Nobody will care,” says Andrés, the film’s central gangster, when he oversees the killing of a couple of kids from a rival gang: “Life is cheap here.”

The film itself is a thriller. Bea and Sarita are sisters, living in poor zone in Guatemala City with their grandmother. The younger, Bea, is determined to have an illicit night out and forces Sarita, her reluctant older sister, to come too. Bea needs to convince their grandma, that it’s all innocent. Bea confesses to Sarita that she’s been seeing someone who works at the bar. He’s called Andrés and, she reveals, he’s in a gang.

When Sarita, magnificently played by Karen Martínez, sees Bea and Andrés rowing, she starts to reveal her more steely side. Her confrontation with Bea ends with a violent row. Sarita leaves, getting a lift home with rich boy Augustin, managing to avoid his sexual advances. To her horror, there is no sign of Bea in the morning. And there’s no chance the police will help find her.

Sarita’s first instinct is to find Augustin to discover what he knows. He lives in a posh gated community and she gatecrashes a party there to find him. He tries to send her packing, but not before she scares him, threatening to reveal his sexual inadequacies. What does she want? A clue to where Bea might have gone and the money to travel there.

And now Sarita’s terrifying adventure begins. She travels to deprived Puerto Barrios and tries in vain to infiltrate Andrés’s gang. She asks if she can stay a night with him. He has no idea who she is, but makes it clear she’s not wanted. But Sarita is determined. Searching his accommodation, she finds a hoodie belonging to Bea. She now insists she wants to join his gang. At this stage she’s given a fearsome task to prove herself. What probably shocks us more than anything at this stage is just how young and seemingly clueless the other gang members are – they really just kids. Andrés himself, played by Rudy Rodriguez, is only a little older and somehow has the look of a battered cherub.

The task she’s given is highly dangerous. She must seduce a hardened middle-aged criminal and lure him back to her hotel room where he’s going to meet his end.The scenes that follow are horrific but somehow thrilling, as Sarita embraces her new persona as Ana Lucia, the fearless and resourceful gang member.

There’s a brief idyll when the gang seems to accept her, and they all take a day off, drinking and playing in a river under a waterfall. And it’s here that Sarita manages to break down Andrés’ tough-guy act, getting him to talk about his background as he shows her his tattoos. But the cycle of violence quickly begin again.

The cadejo blanco of the title is a creature of Guatemalan myth – a wolf-like dog, which can appear in the forest as a protective spirit. Sarita does indeed seem strangely protected. But the last time we see her, she is sitting wearily in a bus, finally going home. As the credits roll, a brilliantly extended shot captures Martínez’s eloquent face that speaks of the damage that has been done. She has truly seen into the heart of darkness.

Cadejo Blanco is in select cinemas and on demand 23 August.

Chilling Guatemalan gang-culture

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