Quadrilateral

Minimalism is a filmmaking style that most moviegoers either love or hate. Admittedly, it’s not one of my favorites, as I feel that it’s often somewhat (excuse the pun) “lacking.” Occasionally, though, I get pleasantly surprised, as is very much the case with writer-director Daniel Rodríguez Risco’s latest feature offering. This suspenseful minimalist domestic thriller tells the tale of an upper middle class family whose matriarch, Adriana (Lizet Chavez), is inexplicably obsessed with everything in her life being based on multiples of four. Her family unit, for example, consists of her, her husband, Alfredo (Gonzalo Molina), and her two children, Lucía (Valentina Saba) and Felipe (Fausto Molina), who lives in a home whose décor sports an undeniable preponderance of squares and rectangles. However, Adriana’s comfort level is decidedly upset when she gives birth to a third child, Tomás (Amil Mikati), because something in her existence in a multiple of five is simply beyond something she can’t handle. As a consequence, her youngest is intentionally marginalized, excluded from family activities and meals, forced to live inside a cramped armoire. But Tomás eventually grows tired of the ostracism and rebels against his relatives, who are subsequently quietly shunned in the same way he once was, a practice allowed to continue as long as the prototypical multiple of four is maintained. This, in turn, sets off a firestorm of retribution amongst the family members – including nasty physical violence against one another – to maintain the prevailing quadruple balance. However, this behavior soon takes a toll on the family, so all concerned willingly agree to take turns purposely disappearing from view from the others, voluntarily locking themselves in an oversized storage trunk until their turn is up. This arrangement isn’t much better, though, as these shifts of “nonexistence” begin seriously disrupting their lives outside the home. So how will this bizarre and puzzling approa...