Diego Luna's 'Ashes' Review: Strong Lead, Weak Pacing
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- Diego Luna directed 'Ashes,' his fifth film behind the camera, adapting Brenda Navarro's novel 'Ceniza en la boca' (translated as 'A Mouthful of Ash') about a 21-year-old Mexican nanny in Madrid
- Anna Diaz stars as Lucila, delivering what the review calls a remarkable performance spanning 'exuberance, curiosity, aggression, sensuality and eventually grief' that outpaces Luna's directorial choices
- The film's structure skips aimlessly through time, moving from Lucila and her brother Diego (Sergio Bautista) being abandoned by their mother as children to her young adult life nearly a decade later with no moment of reflection
- The narrative ping-pongs between Lucila's dating life, au pair job, food delivery gig, and a community of Latin American nannies, with key family details — like her mother living with a female partner — dropped in too late to land emotionally
- Adriana Paz plays Lucila's mother with a 'noncommittal semi-presence,' framed ambiguously within or outside the shot, weakening the cuts to and from Lucila
- The third-act shift to a melancholy family gathering in Mexico, meant to explore how 'home' changes over time, is described as too tonally and visually disconnected to form a worthwhile bridge between the film's two settings
Why it matters: For Luna — best known to mainstream audiences as a fixture of the Star Wars spin-off 'Andor' — the review frames his fifth directorial effort as a study in contrasts: a director who can elicit powerful performances but whose storytelling instincts leave Diaz carrying emotional weight the film never builds around her. Diaz emerges as the real discovery.
