Bettine Mackenzie

 July 2024, Mexico City

In Rotting In The Sun, the character of Sebastian Silva, who is played by the film’s director, Sebastian Silva, wants to die. This wish very nearly came true for both the real-life director Sebastian Silva and the character Sebastian Silva, one and both being the same, when I almost drove him, or them, off a cliff.

Back then, just before nearly heading off the cliff, Sebastian, Mexico, and I did not know each other well. But this was a time when spirits were high and life was merry: the sun sat furious and globular in the sky like a cruel tortilla, as normal, pedestrians tramped up and down specially designed flat pieces of tarmac laid down beside roads and called “pavements,” as normal, not many people were fond of eating rabbit or jugged hare, as normal, as far as I knew none of my friends or loved ones were watching or even vaguely supporting bullfights, as normal.

I worked for a film production company which, about one and a half days into the job, had asked me to drive the director to Tepoztlán to visit a postproduction studio. I began by saying “sí” very loudly and definitely. I put on a black cap that looked producer-like and a bottle of Topo Chico into a mainly black tote bag with the most minimal logos of a café or something, which looked largely producer-like, and slung that bag over my arm in a way that hid the logos as much as possible. I agreed with a firm and fluid voice speaking in English that it would be “more than easy” to get to the town of Tepoztlán, of which there are two: one called Tepoztlán, which is one hour north of Mexico City, and another called Tepozotlán, which is one hour south of Mexico City.

We were on our way to Tepoztlán, the version north of Mexico City, and the correct one I’m telling you, because I had checked this on my Google Maps app and cross-referenced it with the address of the postproduction studio, both within the email signature and on Google, and all was good with the Topo Chico and the tote bag and the sunny rabbits as normal.

What happened was this: about two hours into the ride something felt wrong: namely the sense of time, which had been elongated far past its expected frame, and had felt this way for around forty-five to fifty-three minutes or so. Another thing that felt slightly off was the fact that another producer, a real producer, who wore trainers and a cap and a tote bag that was also real because it had important film festival logos on it, and who drank San Pellegrino fizzy water, which became obvious because of the outline of the bottle within the tote bag and from the sound of clinking that happened now and again, since San Pellegrino uses glass bottles, had been calling me asking where we were, since he was at the postproduction studio and had in fact been there for one hour.

Very quietly and slowly, I continued sitting still within the car I was driving, which was exactly what had been happening just before, and would happen now for some while longer as we continued happily along the road we were travelling: a motorway, long and elegant, leading to the north of Mexico.

I took note of the gut-sucking but in many ways deeply enjoyable feeling of blood leaving my face; enjoyable because it is a rarity in that it cannot be replicated or induced or pretended: it simply happens in unique, tiny moments of horror. No matter how hard people tell me that the brilliant Vicky Krieps ‘acted’ her face draining in Phantom Thread in the restaurant scene when meeting Daniel Day-Lewis for the first time, I can’t believe it, even though, in fact, watching the scene, I do believe it whole-heartedly. In fact, she blushes I’ve just remembered. I got that wrong. It’s the opposite process.

It was only when Sebastian, who is kind and clever and wildly funny and intuitive, sensed my face draining behind the warm window screen and heard the deep silence entering my soul, that he questioned whether there was an issue. It was at this moment that there was nothing else to do but admit that we were going to carefully turn around on the motorway and go in the opposite direction to the traffic, towards Tepoztlán, which was still the correct Tepoztlán, only now miles behind us, as the other version had once been when we first set off. All remained good. The caps had been removed and the Topo Chico drunk. But spirits were still marginally high. The conversation slowed and in fact soon disappeared almost entirely, but the sun was still incredibly hot and furiously globular, which was positive, and we had done a U-Turn.

There was something confusing going on called “roadworks” — no doubt called something else entirely in Spanish. We came across them, and when I looked at Google Maps, which I had been Matilda-staring at now for in fact about forty minutes, willing the small red burning dot that was us to move faster with my mind, it appeared to offer us another option. One that avoided the “roadworks” or perhaps we could say “mantenimiento” — or not, depending on the correct translation of that word.

This other option made itself apparent to me. It was a small track that looked like it might deliver us into the lap of the postproduction studio, according to my cruel darling Google Maps. The small track was a half-built road leading off from the roadworks that had been interrupted by them and, no doubt, therefore, made inaccessible the studio for the millions of poor, deranged creative souls desperate to post produce their feature films but never being able to arrive on time, lost forever circling all the millions of Tepoztláns that have ever existed, for eternity and onwards. This is why so many films have missed out on awards, I think: because of the roadworks around Tepoztlán.

A decision was taken (by me) and we moved down off the motorway onto the track. It was thin, it was brown, it sloped downwards, there was a green and very vegetated hill on the other side rising upwards, there was a false horizon, it was full of pebbles and grit and other stuff, there was nowhere to turn around, we were happy and talking about memes and social media.

In the windscreen mirror, at some point, something caught my eye. It was a man wearing a cap with a flap down the back of his neck – not the sort producers wear it should be said – a high vis jacket – again, unlikely to be seen at a film festival – and waving a quite large flag. He was running down the track towards us, quite fast, and shouting, probably quite loudly, but I couldn’t hear because of the social media buzz inside and the car’s frame around us. I stopped the car to let this small flag-flying man get bigger until he was a full-sized human standing beside my window, which was wound down. The man in the flappy cap explained that the road was under construction, and that if we kept driving, we would very soon drop off a cliff and into a ravine (which contained the postproduction studio in it) and die. Looking forward we noticed the road did indeed end in nothing at all very shortly, and because of this advice we stopped driving onwards, lived, and edited a film.

It is thanks to that guardian angel of cinema and road maintenance that you can now watch Rotting In The Sun on MUBI.

Rotting is funny and ironic and satirical and deliciously incisive about the awful shallowness of social media and the complicated and classist pandemic expat migration to Mexico. It’s not the kind of niche funny that your mum may or may not enjoy – she’ll know it’s funny, objectively, but she should watch it alone, not with you, definitely not with you, nor your siblings or in fact anyone else. To you I recommend watching this film by yourself on a Sunday afternoon with some Electrolytes to cure the hangover and a plate of carrot sticks. The phrase batted around by people speaking about Rotting is that it contains shots of “twenty-five penises”, or perhaps twenty-five shots of penises – some being the same ones. But not only that, it also has a wickedly jittery performance from the ferret-eyed and very talented Catalina Saavedra, a clown-like double act between Augustus-style “happy clown” Instagram influencer Jordan Firstman and white-face sad clown Sebastian, a Hitchcockian layer of suspense and some biting social commentary about the service culture in modern day Mexico. If you’ve been to Mexico City in the 2020s, this film is both the baby and adoptive parent of the ‘zeitgeist’. If you haven’t been, don’t bother, just watch Rotting In The Sun and you’ll understand what it’s all about.