IMDB lists six movies with the title PERPETUUM MOBILE. Who knew?
Oh, that’s right: Robert Koehler. The man knows stuff. Certainly more than IMDB when it comes to this movie. IMDB doesn’t mention that composer Michael Nyman makes a cameo (a relatively pointless one, but who cares) while wearing an outfit much like the one Bob had on while introducing the movie.
Also, courtesy of that introduction, all sorts of other info, like that the lead actor/character Gabino (Gabino Rodriguez), whose head looks like an editorial cartoon caricature of El Vez the Mexican Elvis, is a recurring presence in director Nicolas Pereda’s films. And that Pereda likes the cold, so he goes to Canada during the winter.
Bob’s enthusiasm was infectious on this one, though I may have just been in the right mood. In a slightly different mindset, I can see myself being impatient. I can even picture myself, perhaps as little as five years ago, not wanting to watch something like this. Bob seems to have a particular affection for movies that try to represent life as realistically as possible, with moments of really dry, ironic humor. PERPETUUM MOBILE and POLICE, ADJECTIVE are two of a kind in this regard.
But I think maybe I get it now because I’ve moved twice in the past two years, and found the movers fascinating to observe. The first time, I got two total black stereotypes who were slow, had to listen to R&B the whole time, and took a dump in my new bathroom as soon as they got there, promptly parroting the John Witherspoon/NEXT FRIDAY joke: “I feel five pounds lighter!.” The second time, I got a Russian man and his teenage kid, who were totally no-bullshit.
PERPETUUM MOBILE is about a mover, in Mexico. He is sometimes honest, sometimes less so, but has interesting and varied encounters with different people. It’s an episodic format linked by the framing device of the fact that he lives at home and his mother gets steadily more exasperated with him.
I don’t think it’s a crowd-pleasing movie. It is a critic-pleasing movie. Will that be enough? I don’t know. But it is the sort of movie that we who write about movies get accused of ONLY liking at the expense of, say, Roland Emmerich films.
You just have to be willing to take this one as it comes, at whatever pace it chooses. And don’t get drunk beforehand (I didn’t; had I, this might be a very different review).
