Title: Sansón and Me
MPAA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Director: Rodrigo Reyes
Starring: Gerardo Reyes, Antonio Gonzalez Andrade, Miguel Andrade
Runtime: 1 Hr 25 Mins

What it is:  An interpreter who is also a filmmaker, Rodrigo Reyes, decides to make a movie about the tragic life of Sansón Noe Andrade, a young Mexican immigrant who is serving a life sentence for a shooting he was involved in. The film is a mixture of reenactments, letters between Rodrigo and Sansón, and documentary-style interviews/moments with Sansón’s surviving family members. In the reenactments, Sansón’s real-life family was cast to play young Sansón and some of his deceased relatives. The movie is a film within a film that discusses making the film. 

What We Think: There are times in cinema when for better or worse, a movie makes you feel a strong emotion. I have to be honest and upfront. This is not going to be a positive review. It’s rare that I watch a film, much less a documentary, and feel just…unclean. My heart goes out to Sansón and Sansón’s family, truly, but I can’t help but feel that the filmmaker exploited their pain for this movie. The fact that there are parts where both Sansón and his family have moments where they express discomfort over their involvement in the film makes me feel that this movie really shouldn’t have been made in this way. It brings up painful memories for them and they do not seem to want to be carrying on with the film by a certain point. Because of this, the film feels invasive and intrusive. It feels equivalent to someone filming themselves giving money to those in need or filming a loved one unconscious in a hospital. There are definitely lines being crossed that feel deeply uncomfortable and perhaps even morally questionable. For his own part in the movie, Rodrigo Reyes himself comes across as highly self-indulgent. With the mixing of reenactments, breaking the fourth wall, and the black box theater style interviews with “Sansón” (which were actually with an actor since the real Sansón couldn’t be present) there was a level of pretentiousness laden throughout that made it hard to actually focus on Sansón’s story.

Once the film gets to Sansón’s time in America, the film does get easier to watch. In particular, because the family isn’t being used for the film anymore. Still, there is an air of pretentiousness and I can’t help but feel there was a much more respectful way to tell Sansón’s true life story. In the end, it seems like there was a deeper message that was attempted at being made, but it got lost among some very poor filmmaking choices.

Our Grade: F, I was genuinely angry watching this film at a point. When the family members and Sansón himself in the letters really expressed their discomfort in how this film was being made, it really made me feel that this film was not made with the best of intentions. I don’t think the decision to cast Sansón’s family was a smart one and it really seemed exploitative. The mixture of reenactments and the documentary style didn’t seem to mesh well at all and I really can’t get past how icky this movie made me feel. Not because of Sansón’s heartbreaking story, but because of a filmmaker’s very questionable filmmaking decisions.