For those of us who have been following the career of René Pérez Joglar, aka Residente, since he and stepbrother Eduardo Cabra exploded into Puerto Rico’s and Latin America’s urban and alternative scenes with their group Calle 13 in 2003, the news that he was making his acting debut in Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio’s In the Summers took us by surprise. Residente, who has a solid social media presence, never mentioned it until the film’s world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was announced.
But it also feels like the logical next step in Residente’s transition from music to film. He’s been directing his own music videos since 2019, experimenting with different styles, forms and even genres, some featuring such major Latin American and Spanish actors as: John Leguizamo (El Brindis); Penélope Cruz (313); and Edgar Ramírez (Desencuentro).
I can’t even begin writing about Residente’s mesmerizing, controlled, and arresting performance in Lacorazza Samudio’s film without mentioning its structure. At the core of In the Summers, Lacorazza Samudio’s award-winning film (U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Directing Awards at Sundance; Best First Feature at the Miami Film Festival) lies the relationship between divorced father Vicente (Residente) and his daughters Eva and Violeta (played, respectively, by Luciana Quiñonez and Dreaya Renae Castillo as preteens, Allison Salinas and Kimaya Thais Limòn in their teens, and Sasha Calle and Lio Mehiel as adults) across four summers over 20 years. Lacorazza Samudio divides her story in four chapters, each marking the passage of time, each illustrated before the action begins by an altar, just like those for the Day of the Dead, full of the objects that will play a relevant role in that moment in time for our characters. Alejandro Mejía’s (499, Son of Monarchs) camera lingers on them as they etch themselves into our memory.
Chapter One starts with Vicente cleaning up after a hard night of drinking and smoking, his hands shaking like those of a junkie. He is on his way to the airport to pick up his daughters in what looks like their first visit after his divorce. It’s clear from the effusive welcome that at this stage in their relationship, Eva is the apple of his eye. As he drives them to the house he inherited from his mother in Las Cruces, New Mexico, he promises countless adventures. The house comes with a spotless swimming pool where father and daughters spend a good amount of time. They go out stargazing. They play games.
But there is nothing much to do in this corner of Las Cruces. The only entertainment, at least for Vicente, is the nearby bar and grill managed by Carmen (Emma Ramos, a sensible and strong presence throughout the film) where he spends his time drinking beer and playing pool. It’s also during this first summer that Victoria begins to take her first steps towards asserting her own identity as she begins to cut her long hair short with Eva’s help, an act that leads to an angry closed-door telephone argument between Vicente and his ex-wife. We are also witness to the beginning of the end of that image both sisters have built of their father, as he plays a dangerous game behind the wheel of his car, an incident that will reverberate at the end of Chapter Two.
Their next three visits follow the same pattern with some variations: they arrive, spend some time with their father, he succumbs to his erratic, sometimes violent behavior, and they leave. But it’s the accruing of details that matter. The once clean swimming pool is full of fetid water by the beginning of Chapter Two and full of children’s toys by film's end. The dynamics of their relationship to Vicente and themselves changes as well. Violeta begins to embrace her queer identity with the help of Carmen. Eva is no longer the apple of Vicente’s eye; Victoria, with her good grades and promising college career is. His alcoholism has gotten worse, and his behavior has become more unpredictable even after he remarries and becomes the father of another child.
Lacorazza Samudio’s triumph lies in making us believe that time is passing by right in front of us and in casting three sets of actors who convincingly play a pair of sisters over two decades. The score written by Residente’s stepbrother Eduardo Cabra is full of melancholic, otherworldly sounds that contribute to the film’s feeling of desolation, alienation and understanding is spot-on. Alejandro Mejía’s eye finds beauty in this quiet maelstrom, in those empty storefronts whose roofs are framed against New Mexico’s bright cloudless blue skies, in its blindingly white sand dunes, in its sunrises and the ravines that lead to the spot from where to watch them.
Then there’s Residente, the glue that holds this film together. In other hands, Vicente could have turned into an ugly monster, undeserving of redemption. Too many actors would have latched into his dark side because that would appeal to the ham in them. Not Residente. His outbursts are brief, abrupt, unexpected, making them that more disturbing. But there is also sincerity, love, and awkwardness in his attempts to make things right for his daughters, in his effort to be a good father in spite of his absence from their lives. His performance feels as autobiographical as Lacorazza Samudio’s writing…and perhaps for good reason. Just take a look at the 2020 music video he directed for his autobiographical song René; it complements In the Summers in surprising ways.
Most films made by Latinos in the United States tend to focus on how their characters overcome their personal problems, how they triumph over adversity. So hungry are we for positive stories and symbols and so eager are creators in presenting an image of our community that contradicts more than a century of stereotypes on the big and small screens and printed pages, that we tend to overlook that we are also frail beings, that we are not perfect, that we too can make mistakes and have to learn to live with them. That we are as complex, as human, as flawed and aggravating and enervating but also as loving as the characters created by Lacorazza Samudio.
In the Summers is now playing in theaters.
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