New Order (Nuevo Orden)

A Mexican high society wedding is in full flow with bride and groom Alan (Dario Yazbek Bernal) and Marianne (Naian González Norvind) (in a brilliant red suit) meeting and greeting guests and family. The camera moving between the people is almost documentary style picking up conversations between guests and the servers. There’s word of activity outside the heavily guarded home enough to scare some off, as one guest arrives with green paint splashed on them.

Something is brewing when Rolando (Eligio Meléndez) and former employee of the family arrives at the gate asking for 200,000 pesos so that his wife can be treated privately for her illness having been thrown out of the hospital earlier on to make way for others. Meeting first with his former boss and then Marianne they can’t between them raise the money. Meanwhile the younger guests are enjoying the privilege to their position snorting drugs.

Rolando leaves and Marianne decides to go after him. Away from the house and guards there’s increasing agitation in the streets with reports of looting and the police block her way. Back at the wedding there is a mass break-in and shootings with guards and servants turning on the guests looting and killing. The aftermath of the day is a body strewn home, martial law, Marianne missing and a new power in charge. She, like many others, has been kidnapped, and there is a ransom to pay for her liberty.
In some respects, New Order does itself no favours by being so black and white about the haves and have nots. Much of it is not subtle with extreme violence meted out by all and sundry. Certainly director and writer Michel Franco doesn’t look to build much sympathy with anyone other than Marianne who could be the conduit between the old and New Order.

The film digs deeper as it progresses as to what this is all about and the motives of the various factions, and the hypocrisy. Like the Brazilian film Bacurau, with which it shares some social themes, a viewer with specific knowledge of Mexico’s politics and society may glean a little extra though there are universal themes that will be very familiar. It has caused controversy in Mexico where the film has been accused of both elitism and racism (in the portrayal of the indigenous population).

It is at times profoundly distressing and gruelling though the camera doesn’t linger, just documents. The performances are all excellent with Norvind as the kind hearted Marianne dragged into a horrendous situation subject to degradation and manipulation by all sides. There’s a heightened unreality about the whole thing conversely related by very natural performances.