Last year's film “The Voice of Freedom” was a box office hit, attracting the attention of conspiracy theorists and religious groups and convincing audiences that watching it was a morally righteous act against those who commit the horrors of human trafficking.
Director-writer-producer Mohit Ramchandani’s “City of Dreams” seeks to repeat the formula. This “must-see” narrative is told this time from the perspective of a nonverbal 15-year-old boy from the central Mexican state of Puebla. Promised that he will participate in a soccer camp, a cartel-backed trafficker (Francisco Denis in a terrifying, cringe-inducing turn) convinces his father to let him go alone. Instead, the boy is held against his will in a dark, windowless Los Angeles house that serves as an underground clothing manufacturing operation. Throughout the ordeal, Jesus clings to his dream of playing in a packed stadium, which comes to life on screen in brilliant, dreamlike sequences.
Hoping to attract Latino viewers, the drama has a cast of high-profile producers including Oscar-nominated Mexican actress and activist Yalitza Aparicio, Puerto Rican “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi, and filmmaker Luis Mandoqui, whose film “Innocent Voices,” about a child who survives war in El Salvador, shares similarities in subject matter. Aparicio’s involvement with the project isn’t the only onscreen connection to Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning “Roma,” with actor Jorge Antonio Guerrero (who played Fermín in “Roma”) playing a small role here as Jesus’ father. But despite the cast of names on board for its built-in social change element, the final product can’t rest solely on the weight of its message.
Ramchandani’s baffling script contains the most obvious stereotypes that are common in uninteresting Hollywood films about Latino communities. Yet the film’s dialogue, which ranges from the ridiculously stereotypical to the downright absurd in the context of a sweatshop, stands out as the most egregious insult. The use of language is narratively inconsequential. Somehow, Jesús and the other recent Latino immigrants inside the facility understand and speak English to each other. Or have they managed to learn it fluently in the spare moments their captors allow? The use of Spanish proves odd, as characters choose to use their first language in situations where English would make more sense. The lack of cultural awareness or interest here is astonishing.
Chilean Alfredo Castro, one of Latin America’s most versatile actors and a regular in Pablo Larraín’s films, plays the Shakespearean villain known as “El Jiffy” with grandiose speeches, while Mexican Diego Calva, who had a breakout role in Damien Chazelle’s “Papillon,” appears as Carlitos, another exploited immigrant at the breaking point. Andrés Delgado, as Cesar, the tattooed enforcer of discipline, is largely over-the-top because of the words he is required to say in English and in angry tones. It’s painful to see a cast of objectively talented actors wasted in this way. Late in the film, Ramchandani shows his intention to assign Cesar and “El Jiffy” their own struggles with the “American dream”: the former wants to go to college, the ringleader hopes to bring his son home. These feeble efforts to humanize them more in a few shots do little to improve their cliched concept.
Lopez’s performance benefits from having no dialogue to say. The fresh-faced young actor holds the picture together as he convincingly embodies at least the extreme distress anyone in the character’s circumstances might experience. However, Jesus is the focus of many of the thematic elements that plunge “City of Dreams” deeper into the land of bad ideas. After being badly beaten, Jesus receives help for his wounds from a girl who is also in captivity. The image begs to be used as a religious symbol. Then there’s the tone-deaf portrayal of a native healer in traditional garb during horrific passages that suggest Jesus has been cursed since birth. Add in a subplot involving a police officer trying to dig up dirt on the criminal organization behind the abuse while facing charges of police brutality.
The film belies the disappointing script, with its masterful cinematography. Cinematographers Alejandro Chávez and Trevor Roach capture the underworld where the victims work and live with limited light sources, creating a bleak and oppressive environment that highlights the inhumane conditions they are subjected to. An impressive chase that begins inside a massive warehouse before moving into the alleyways of downtown Los Angeles’ garment district takes Lopez through hallways, doors, sidewalks and balconies with what appears to be a handheld camera. It’s a shame that the obviously lavish production value can’t atone for the more notorious pitfalls.
What’s interesting here is that City of Dreams ends with an actual call to action after the final title card. Without a uniform, the young Lopez addresses the audience, denouncing politicians and celebrities who aren’t doing enough to end these inhumane practices (and that’s not a mistake) and urging them to tell others about the film. Ramchandani couldn’t have emphasized more clearly that the film’s artistic merits come second to “impact.” There’s no denying the gravity of the subject matter, as well as the need to address it comprehensively, but when the message trumps everything else in the storytelling, a strange kind of overtly ideological filmmaking emerges: expensive public service announcements masquerading as art.
