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"Damn women are the ruination of men," or so that's how the Mexican folk song goes in Arturo Ripstein's The Ruination of Men, which screens this Friday night at the Dryden Theatre. On the surface, this eponymous downfall is definitely women, or possibly the inability to play baseball worth a damn (this is, perhaps, why soccer is the most popular sport in the world). But looking deeper, it becomes clear the real undoing of the hairier sex is men themselves. Like, duh.
The best way for me to describe Men would be to tell you to imagine Luis Buñuel directing a Ron Shelton-penned script of Six Feet Under, only shot in black-and-white DV and told in three out-of-sequence acts. Go ahead - imagine it. I dare you. Now add a midget, a radio that can pick up God's thoughts, a coveted pair of snakeskin boots and the line, "You can tell she likes a pickle in her pouch," and Men starts to sound like something out of a Happy Gilmore dream sequence (save the lack of a lingerie-clad Julie Bowden brandishing pitchers of beer).
Ripstein, who was once an assistant director to Buñuel, and his screenwriter wife, Paz Alicia Garciadiego, craft an absurd tragi-comedy about a seemingly happy-go-lucky guy (Rafael Inclán) who gets ambushed and killed on his way home. The second part shows his wife (a hysterical Patricia Reyes Spíndola) and his mistress arguing over his body at the police station, but it isn't until the third act (which is really the first act) that we learn why the ambush ever took place. Men is packed full of long, meditative takes courtesy of Ripstein's handheld camera that may initially lull some to sleep, but everyone should snap to when the deceased's mourning lovers scuffle with each other right on top of the corpse.
1:44 - Not Rated
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