The escalating ramifications of peer pressure and teenage bullying have rarely been as agonising and intensely distressing as they are in Michel Franco’s latest, AFTER LUCIA, for which he also writes the screenplay. Having screened to rave reviews in the Un Certain Regard section of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Franco’s second feature (after 2009’s DANIEL & ANA) takes a magnifying stab at the evils of adolescence and the hardships faced by those looking to move on from an already traumatic ordeal, only to be met with equally troubling ones.

The tender, angelic Tessa La (who delivers a quietly spoken but supremely affecting performance) plays Alejandra, a teenage girl who, after losing her mother in a tragic car accident, moves with her father Roberto (Hermàn Mendoza) to Mexico City, both looking for a fresh start. Despite suffering from sometimes crippling rage and bouts of depression, Roberto establishes a position at a restaurant as the head chef, while Alejandra quickly integrates herself within the local school. Affectionate and understanding, the relationship shared by father and daughter is transmitted to their joint approaches at carrying on with their new lives, especially by Alejandra whose discernible likeability quickly gels with a clique of rich kids that take her under their wing.

…manages to balance its disturbing subject matter with scenes of almost unbearable physical and emotional torture with indelible tension…

After a drunken night which sees Alejandra being filmed having sex with a member of the group, she is unanimously labelled a whore and quickly becomes the victim of vicious and unremitting bullying, which exacerbates into something far more reprehensible and destructive. Becoming increasingly trapped by the closing walls that surround her, suppressing her grief so not to disturb her father’s tetchy emotions, Alejandra falls prey both to the unprovoked harassment and her own sense of guilt towards her mother’s death.

Culminating in progressive and unflinchingly painful devastation, AFTER LUCIA is a film that manages to balance its disturbing subject matter with scenes of almost unbearable physical and emotional torture with indelible tension, rarely losing its momentum as it draws to an unpredictably gaping conclusion. Although – as Alejandra’s silenced oppression at the hands of a gaggle of pubescent sadists becomes gradually more degrading and tragic – Franco doesn’t quite justify exactly why these teenagers are exacting such a hurtful campaign against this young woman, the bullying is never glorified or overexposed, instead opting for something altogether more plausible, however vindictive. Similarly, the bond between Alejandra and Roberto is carefully absorbing despite the two speaking little to each other, with Franco’s stable camera mirroring their disparate stoicism. Harrowing without exaggerating the slowly imploding story, this is an extremely powerful film that, despite being pinned back visually, never fails to pack a numbing punch.

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