Sin Nombre
Written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
Runtime: 96 min.
Sin Nombre’s Casper (Edgar Flores) doesn’t even have to fuck girls stupid; a few guarded remarks and an act of heroism toward Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is all it takes for the teenaged girl to make some mind-blowingly idiotic choices. At least when Casper’s girlfriend Martha shows up uninvited to a meeting of his violent, surreally tattooed gang, she has the excuse of being addled by sex. Sayra just comes across as willfully stupid as she destroys her family’s chances of successfully emigrating from Central America into the U.S.
Rescuing Sayra from being raped by his gang leader by killing him (on top of a moving train, no less), Casper has given up all hope of living past the week’s end. But no matter how he explains this to Sayra, she still insist on hitching her wagon to his star, abandoning her family on the train while they sleep to wander the country with Casper, claiming she feels safe with him. Why a girl would feel safe with the man whose gang robbed her father at gunpoint and then tried to rape her is never explained, but maybe Sayra’s hormones are just wreaking havoc with her rationality. Surely there’s no reason for her to leave her father behind when they’re on their way to his wife’s home in New Jersey.
And unfortunately, other than some gorgeous scenery, Sayra’s stupidity is the only thing that feels truly fresh in Fukunaga’s debut feature, which won the directing award at the 2009 Sundance Festival. The upshot of the rest of the film is that gangs are violent and insist upon revenge, and the immigrants’ journey is a long and dangerous one.
At least the actors are promising. Flores has the delicate sensitivity of Gael Garcia Bernal (a producer on the film), while Sayra’s potential rapist was right on the money when he called her a young Salma Hayek. Sayra might be an idiot of colossal proportions, but Gaitan never judges her. We might not respect Sayra, but Gaitan makes sure that we at least like her.
