{"id":643732,"date":"2026-05-15T01:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/643732\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T01:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:15:08","slug":"ashes-diego-luna-helms-a-middling-meandering-migration-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/643732\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ashes’: Diego Luna Helms a Middling, Meandering Migration Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBound by a common language and torrid history, 21-year-old Mexican nanny Lucila (Anna Diaz) bristles against her surroundings in Madrid, where she and her younger brother followed their mother from their Mexican hometown. \u201cAshes<\/a>\u201d shares these broad strokes with the novel on which it\u2019s based \u2014 Brenda Navarro\u2019s evocatively titled \u201cCeniza en la boca,\u201d or \u201cA Mouthful of Ash\u201d \u2014 but even those unfamiliar with the book might still be tipped off to the haphazard nature of Diego Luna<\/a>\u2019s adaptation. The film plays out like a tale where too much has been relegated to the margins and left between the cuts, where the performances shine but their emotional foundations have been laid in reverse. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst-time filmmakers can usually be forgiven some of these sins, only most viewers might not realize that this is Luna\u2019s fifth go in the director\u2019s chair. The actor has found tremendous mainstream success as a fixture of \u201cStar Wars\u201d spin-off \u201cAndor,\u201d but back on Earth, his talents behind the camera have unfortunate limitations. Perhaps it might make sense to lead with his strengths, as Luna himself does here: He knows how to elicit a powerful performance, and more often than not, how to capture its dimensions. Diaz is remarkable in the leading role, as a young woman trying to make her way in Spain, despite social and legal constraints. Exhibiting exuberance, curiosity, aggression, sensuality and eventually grief, she breathes life into Lucila at every turn, even when Luna\u2019s other cinematic tools fall short.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the very beginning, something feels amiss. \u201cAshes\u201d skips aimlessly through time, with nary a moment to let the enormity of its developments land. No sooner are Lucila and her brother Diego (Sergio Bautista) tearfully abandoned by their mother as children than the Spanish setting takes the wheel, thrusting us quickly and headfirst into Lucila\u2019s young adult life nearly a decade later, without even half a second\u2019s worth of reflection. Granted, the cast is skilled enough to work these intimate specifics into (and beneath) their conversations, but the details are often dropped into these empty spaces after long delays, a kind of Tetris storytelling that works far more as an intellectual exercise than an emotional one.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoving between Lucila\u2019s dating life, her job as au pair, her second gig as a food delivery driver, and the community of Latin American nannies that forms her social circle, the film is left with little time to fully establish the contours of her family situation. Information is sprung quickly and economically \u2014 her mother lives with a female partner; Diego acts troubled at school, forcing Lucila to look after him \u2014 but there\u2019s little richness to this depiction of a fractured home. There\u2019s seldom a \u201cwhat\u201d or \u201cwhy\u201d to what transpires in this regard, and even when major developments occur, their impact rests on Diaz\u2019s shoulders, as her reactions work overtime to suggest possibilities that we might have to sift through for lengthy periods before we know what\u2019s really happening. And so the film trails off between various plot points, each given equal importance as Lucila ping-pongs between them. \u201cAnd then, and then, and then\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLuna has the right instincts within his limited storytelling framework, in that he practically lets his camera gravitate towards Diaz, but this happens in part because he doesn\u2019t seem to know where else to put it. Lucila\u2019s mother (Adriana Paz) ends up captured with a kind of noncommittal semi-presence, commanding a camera that can\u2019t seem to decide if she exists within the frame, outside it, or on its margins, robbing the film\u2019s framing, and its cuts to and from Lucila, of their potential power.<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually, as we find Lucila back in Mexico for a melancholy family gathering, the late third-act swerve, towards a tale of how the idea of \u201chome\u201d changes just as much as people, ends up too tonally and visually disconnected to form a worthwhile bridge between events, and between places, since both its primary locales are malformed. How Lucila gets here physically, and logistically, is intuitive enough, but the emotional journey this trip takes her on is left too vague to make a meaningful impact, as much as Diaz might conjure great life from within the film\u2019s simulacrum of living on the margins. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bound by a common language and torrid history, 21-year-old Mexican nanny Lucila (Anna Diaz) bristles against her surroundings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[277911,32176,57176,88,206],"class_list":["post-643732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ashes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-diego-luna","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}