Rodents

director: Sebastián Cordero
year: 1999

The life of a young Ecuadoran drop-out (Simón Brauer) spirals out of control after the unexpected arrival and attachment of his felonious uncle (Marcos Bustos)—who can only be described as a charismatic virus.


Rodents (the title flows much better in Spanish: Ratas, ratones, rateros) begins with a quiet, eerily intimate scene between a hardened thug and his prostitute girlfriend: they have sex and cuddle on a bed in a decrepit room, he gets up, he smokes drugs*. Suddenly, a few men with big guns break down the door and intimacy gives way to 80s Hong Kong-style action! There's a chase, zooms, and blood. By itself, this introductory episode—its mix of genre with a more personal touch—is reminiscent of a film like Wong Kar-wai's directorial debut As Tears Go By. It's the one great part of an otherwise good film.

Soon enough, however, the film stabilizes and, as the focus switches from the thug to his young, delinquent cousin, so do Cordero's sensibilities. The result is neither generic action nor arthouse fare, but a more typical "street kid" story, tinged with what it wouldn't be out of place to call the aroma of Latino daytime television—though still shot with a steady hand and edited by a well-trained eye. It's all quite affecting and engaging, too, even as everything unfolds exactly like you might expect.

What Cordero always has going for him, though, is the gritty realism of his urban environment; and Rodents, because of its exotic (in the film sense, at least) setting, gathers in social momentum as hidden behind the humdrum story lurks the reality of life in 21st-century Quito—and, quite probably, many other Latin American cities, as well. It's fresh, therefore, for the very reason that we've rarely seen Ecuador on screen. Whether that's a valid reason for liking the film, or merely some kind of post-colonial faux pas, I'm not sure; but when its packaged with an entertaining and emotional narrative, I don't think it's a waste of time to find out.

* The drug-smoking is rendered in the same kind of cut-up, sped-up style that Darren Aronofsky used a year later in Requiem for Dream.