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New Order (film)

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New Order
Theatrical release poster
SpanishNuevo orden
Directed byMichel Franco
Written byMichel Franco
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyYves Cape
Edited by
  • Óscar Figueroa
  • Michel Franco
Production
companies
Distributed byVideocine
Release dates
  • September 10, 2020 (2020-09-10) (Venice)
  • October 22, 2020 (2020-10-22) (Mexico)
Running time
86 minutes[1]
Countries
  • Mexico
  • France
LanguageSpanish
Box office$2 million[2][3]

New Order (Spanish: Nuevo orden) is a 2020 Mexican-French thriller art film.[4] It takes place in a dystopian near future Mexico. It was written, directed, produced and edited by Michel Franco and is a French-Mexican co-production.

The film had its world premiere on September 10, 2020 at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Shots of darker-skinned underclass attacking a lighter-skinned elite provoked a furious backlash on Mexican social media when its trailer was released because of its perceived racial stereotyping.[5] The criticism towards the film continued after its premiere in theaters and still remained after its release in streaming.[6][7][8][9][10] The film stars Naian González Norvind, Diego Boneta and Mónica Del Carmen.

Synopsis

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In 2020, the gap between social classes in Mexico is increasingly marked. A high-society wedding is interrupted by a group of armed and violent rioters who are part of an even larger uprising of the underprivileged, and take the participants as hostages.[11] The Mexican Army exploits the disorder caused by the riots to establish a military dictatorship in the country. It involves the kidnappings of young adults, extortion, assaults, torture of the kidnapped while being held, and execution upon receiving no ransom, some of it, or all of it, by the Mexican military.

Cast

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Production

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Michel Franco started to develop the idea in 2014, and finished the script in 2017. Production concluded in May, 2019. The cast included Naian Gonzalez Norvind, Diego Boneta, Mónica Del Carmen, Fernando Cuautle, Darío Yazbek Bernal and Eligio Meléndez.

Release

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The film had its world premiere on September 10, 2020 at the Venice Film Festival where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize.[12] It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 15, 2020.[13] Shortly after, Neon and Mubi acquired distribution rights to the film in the U.S., the U.K., India, Ireland, Latin America and Turkey, respectively.[14][15] The film was released in Mexico on October 22, 2020, by Videocine.[16] It was released in a limited release in the United States on May 21, 2021.[17]

Reception

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Critical reception

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New Order holds a 67% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 104 reviews, with an average of 6.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "In spite of solid performances, New Order's merciless brutality and unfocused gaze threaten to derail its message."[18] On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 62 out of 100, based on 22 critics.[19]

Peter Debruge of Variety said: "Essentially picking up where The Joker left off, this ultra-provocative case of speculative fiction promises a view of what change might look like, only to succumb to a deep sense of cynicism as the scope of the film becomes unmanageable."[20]

IndieWire gave it a C+, as critic Nicholas Barber wrote: "It's a bold, angry, provocative indictment, but because Franco zooms back to the state-of-the-nation big picture, he loses sight of the characters who were sketched so sharply in the opening scenes. They’re still in the film, but they have so little agency and dialogue that they are reduced to counters on a board".[21]

In Spain, newspaper El País wrote: "The film does not come close to the fine class analysis that Bong Joon-ho's Parasite made, because it fails to increasingly develop the unbearable tension between rich and poor... His chaos scenes are closer to those seen in Todd Phillips' Joker, but without an actor like Joaquin Phoenix to understand the depth of the madness".[22] The sociologist David Leupold also sees a strong parallel between the two films, albeit, arrives at a more positive evaluation:

"New Order begins where Parasite ends ... In the case of Parasite we see the story unfolding from the perspective of the dispossessed family whereas in New Order it is through the perspective of an elite family subjected to violence by the dispossessed. What both films also have in common is the lack of clear moralizing attributes. Neither the elites appear as particularly vicious nor the disempowered as heroic ... It is clear that instead of self-righteous blaming, polemical simplifications and paternalizing moralizations, the directors are concerned with something else and much more decisive: exposing the acute structures of injustice and the imminent danger they harbour."[23]

Backlash in Mexico

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Prior to its release in Mexican cinemas, the film's trailer was received with an overwhelming negative response from the public and internet backlash as the scenes of the trailer was called by Mexican audiences on social media "Classist, racist and painfully stereotypical portraits of upper and lower classes in Mexico".[24][25]

The racism accusations towards the film in Mexico worsened as director Michel Franco claimed the film was a target of "profound reverse racism" and felt himself as a victim of "hate crimes" as a White Mexican.[26][27][28] Franco would later post an apology on social media for his statements, claiming he was not aware of the impact of the terms he used towards the public's reception of the film trailer.[29][30][31]

José Antonio Aguilar, executive director of RacismoMX, a nationwide initiative in Mexico to address issues of racism in the country said: “The film's trailer repeats many racial stereotypes: brown people are poor, they’re savages, they’re resentful and want revenge.”[citation needed]

After the release of the film, Erick Estrada from the website Cinegarage wrote: "[To] the ones who wish [to] revert [to] the establishment, [it is] a warning about the consequences of their acts than calling attention to how it was before the country's militarization."[7] In Codigo Espaguetti, Nicolas Ruiz said the film is "[a criticism], with no empathy, from this cold distance that sees individuals as sheep and protesters as blood-thirsty zombies; it creates banal, shallow and Manichean representations".[8]

Arturo Magaña Arce in Cine Premiere reiterated the same view when he said the film "gives reason to those who judge people who, in a desperate way, [seek to] reclaim justice from the streets".[32]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "New Order". Venice Film Festival. 17 July 2020. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
  2. ^ "New Order (2020)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
  3. ^ "New Order (2020)". The Numbers. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  4. ^ "'New Order' Review: Upsetting Art-House Thriller Frames a Fictional Uprising from the Perspective of the 1%". 10 September 2020.
  5. ^ "Film trailer touches a nerve as Mexico grapples with race and class". the Guardian. 2020-10-15. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  6. ^ "Amazon Prime estrena "Nuevo Orden"; usuarios reaccionan (+video)". 24 horas (in Spanish). 2021-03-16.
  7. ^ a b Erick Estrada (2020-10-16). "Nuevo orden, crítica". Cine Garage (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2020-11-28.
  8. ^ a b Nicolas Ruiz (2020-10-22). "Reseña: Nuevo Orden el espectacular miedo conservador Michel Franco". Codigos Espaguetti (in Spanish).
  9. ^ "Nuevo orden – Crítica de la película". Cine Premiere. 2020-10-22.
  10. ^ "Nuevo orden: la película que le teme a la pobreza". gatopardo.com. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
  11. ^ Debruge, Peter (2020-09-10). "'New Order' Review: Upsetting Art-House Thriller Frames a Fictional Uprising From the Perspective of the 1%". Variety. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  12. ^ Tartaglione, Nancy (28 July 2020). "Venice Film Festival 2020: Competition Light On Studios, Strong On Global Arthouse & Women Directors – Full List". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
  13. ^ Wiseman, Andreas (30 July 2020). "Toronto Sets 2020 Lineup: Werner Herzog, Regina King, Mira Nair, Francois Ozon, Naomi Kawase Titles Join Hybrid Edition". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
  14. ^ Wiseman, Andreas (September 29, 2020). "Neon Lands North American Rights To Michel Franco's Venice Grand Jury Prize Winner 'New Order'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
  15. ^ Wiseman, Andreas (October 1, 2020). "Michel Franco's Venice Winner 'New Order' Gets UK & Ireland Distribution Deal".
  16. ^ "New Order". VideoCine. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  17. ^ Leishman, Rachel (April 22, 2021). "'New Order': NEON's Dystopian Film Receives First Disturbing Trailer". Collider. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  18. ^ "New Order (2020)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  19. ^ "New Order". Metacritic. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
  20. ^ Debruge, Peter (2020-09-10). "'New Order' Review: Upsetting Art-House Thriller Frames a Fictional Uprising From the Perspective of the 1%". Variety. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  21. ^ "'New Order' Review: Michel Franco's Violent Protest Movie is Horrifying, Unpredictable, and Out of Control". 11 September 2020.
  22. ^ Osorio, Camila (2020-10-22). "El viejo orden de Michel Franco". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  23. ^ Leupold, David (2022-01-04). "Unhappy End Cinema". Medium. Retrieved 2022-08-17.
  24. ^ "Película mexicana 'Nuevo orden' recibe críticas de clasista y racista en redes sociales". Dallas News (in Spanish). 2020-10-21. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  25. ^ "La película Nuevo Orden desató un debate sobre racismo y clasismo en México (y ni siquiera se ha estrenado)". PlayGround (in Spanish). 2020-10-15. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  26. ^ "Whitexican, un término profundamente racista: Michel Franco". www.milenio.com (in Mexican Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  27. ^ "Decir whitexican es racismo: Michel Franco sobre críticas a Nuevo Orden". Animal MX (in Spanish). 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  28. ^ Vergara, Rosalía (2020-10-15). "Michel Franco dice que el término "whitexican" es racista y lo tunden en redes". Proceso Portal de Noticias (in Mexican Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  29. ^ "Michel Franco se disculpa por decir "whitexican" a días de estrenarse "Nuevo Orden" que triunfó en Venecia | Video". CNN (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  30. ^ "'La regué enormemente': Michel Franco se disculpa por decir que usar 'whitexican' es racista". Animal MX (in Spanish). 2020-10-16. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  31. ^ "Michel Franco se disculpa por decir que usar "Whitexican" es racista". heraldodemexico.com.mx (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  32. ^ "Nuevo orden – Crítica de la película". Cine Premiere (in Spanish). 2020-10-22.
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