So Much Tenderness

Directed by Lina Rodríguez, So Much Tenderness follows Noëlle Schönwald’s Aurora as she and her daughter (Natalia Aranguren’s Lucía) flee to Canada after her husband is murdered – with the narrative subsequently detailing both characters’ ongoing attempts at starting anew. Filmmaker Rodríguez, armed with her own screenplay, kicks So Much Tenderness off with a deliberate yet intriguing opening stretch involving Aurora’s nail-biting efforts at crossing into Canada, with Schönwald’s superb performance and Rodríguez’s gritty visuals effectively heightening the tense, promising atmosphere. It’s disappointing to note, then, that the picture segues into an excessively subdued midsection that feels padded-out to an often absurd degree, as Rodríguez has suffused the proceedings with a series of meandering interludes that are hardly as compelling or engaging as the writer/director has obviously intended – with the arms-length vibe compounded by a continuing emphasis on uneventful, small-talk-focused episodes that feel like they’ve been improvised by the actors. And although the movie picks up with the arrival of a figure from Aurora’s past, So Much Tenderness‘ overlong running time and proliferation of entirely needless sequences ensure that it fizzles out long before arriving at its ineffective, fourth-wall-breaking conclusion – with the end result a disappointing misfire that generally feels like it could (and should) be much better.

** out of ****