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Totem Movie Review

Totem is a 2023 Mexican drama film directed by Lila Aviles and starring Naima Senties in the main role. It really wasn’t a successful experiment.

Seven-year-old Sol spends the day at her grandfather’s home, helping to prepare a surprise party for her father. Throughout the day, chaos slowly takes over and fractures the family’s foundations. This movie was lauded for its realism and simplicity, but I found it to be too realistic. It offers us a look into one family celebration that also acts as a farewell party to their oldest family member. It’s all sweet and fine, but devoid of any drama.

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Drama as a genre is called drama for a reason. Real life is actually quite boring, so films really need to elevate real life with heightened emotions and more interesting scenarios. This movie did none of that, basically functioning as a look into a family gathering that seems incredibly grounded in reality, but not for the better.

While its performances are solid and I really liked Naima Senties in the main role of Sol, the movie has so many characters that it failed to meaningfully develop any of them. I did get those familial emotions here, which was great, but the movie was in desperate need of more memorable characterizations, plot points and momentum.

Totem is not cheesy at all, which was its main strength. It’s extremely realistic, which was an issue for me in terms of storytelling, but at least that realism reflected well on that lack of emotional manipulation. Totem is a film that has numerous moments that are endearing and charming for sure, but it’s so technically unpolished, rough and genuinely bad-looking that it made me wonder how it could gather all these great reviews when it looked so cheap and uncinematic.

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