Chain-smoking and foul-mouthed, Socorro (Luisa Huertas) — a veteran, can’t-suffer-any-fools lawyer — clings to the memory of her dead brother both like a chain that keeps her captive and the engine that keeps her going in “We Shall Not Be Moved,” writer-director Pierre Saint-Martin’s blistering and tightly conceived feature debut. The sound of a helicopter haunts Socorro, who uses hearing aids, either as a bad omen from a distant past or a warning for the tenebrous path she is inching closer to in her restless quest for retribution. In the opening sequence of this black-and-white chamber piece, Huerta’s piercing gaze points directly at the lens, as if Socorro acknowledges the viewer’s intrusion into her microcosm.
Coque, her brother, died at the hands of a soldier during the state-sanctioned student massacre that ravaged Mexico City’s Tlatelolco apartment complex on Oct. 2, 1968. And for the last 50 years, Socorro has been searching for the name of the killer. Documentary footage of the protests that preceded the bloodshed serve as the film’s prologue. Through a perpetually irate visage, the ferocious and magnetic Huertas imbues this woman with a virulent conviction, sculpted from a lifetime of hurt that weighs heavy on her weathered body and tattered soul. Her guilt-driven resolve is all-consuming and pathological. She appears trapped taking meetings with clients in the apartment, as if still waiting for Coque to return. For a while that suspicion convinces her he’s reincarnated as a white dove.
Inside her home, a fortress of folders and documents collected over a lifetime dedicated to attaining justice for others by any means necessary (she’s not above violence or bribery as a means to an end), Socorro interacts with her distressed son Jorge (Pedro Hernández), an unemployed journalist; her daughter-in-law, Lucia (Argentine actress Agustina Quinci); and her estranged sister, Esperanza (Rebeca Manriquez). The outside world enters her purview in the form of playful phone conversation with former mentor, Cardiani (Juan Carlos Colombo), and the visits that Sidarta (José Alberto Patiño), a giddy but loyal pseudo-assistant, pays her. Patino’s charisma counterbalances the sternness of Huertas’ part.
“Justice in this country is for the rich or those with power,” Socorro, her eyes full of assertive wisdom, tells Sidarta once her brewing bitterness can finally be channeled into action. A package from an old contact reveals the name of the man she’s after. Socorro sets in motion her “eye for an eye” plan, with Sidarta doing her bidding. In this portrait of inescapable rage, Saint-Martin and his co-writer Iker Compeán Leroux shrewdly frame the larger historical tragedy within Socorro’s individual plight — how the events shaped who she’s become and how her relationships continue to suffer from her single-mindedness.
Each of Socorro’s human connections feels steeped in a shared history and lightly soaked in acidly comedic undertones, even if the supporting parts enjoy limited screentime. Sidarta acts as a sort of proxy for her real son, who she named after Coque (a nicknamed for those named Jorge), and whom she’s burdened with expectations (or at least that how he feels). And it’s in her motherly friendship with Lucia, especially during a drunken night, that glimmers of Socorro’s personality beyond rancor peak through. The version of herself who loved dancing and enjoyed many lovers hasn’t been completely buried.
In smoky rooms, reflected on a round mirror, or as feathers from imaginary, innocent doves fall around her — in disorienting episodes that stem from her deteriorating health — cinematographer César Gutiérrez Miranda’s camera caresses Huertas’ face like the irreplaceable asset that it is for the film. In both form and tone, Saint-Martin also pays homage to “Duck Season,” another black-and-white Mexican indie set in the Tlatelolco apartments — that one by his former screenwriter teacher and accomplished filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke. (A DVD of the 2004 coming-of-age movie makes a cameo.)
In making a film about the past set in the present, Saint-Martin formulates an indictment on his country’s unhealed wounds, which rather than cauterize with time, remain open since the festering corruption and abuse of power that obscured the truth around the students’ deaths, remains in place. When Socorro calls a judge she once knew to ask for a favor, she blackmails him with unsavory information. Just before hanging up, he reminds her that he’s no longer just a judge, but a magistrate. Not only was he never held accountable for his dubious dealings; on the contrary, he’d been promoted into a higher position in the “justice” system. That Socorro eventually enlists the help of the type of criminals she once swore never to defend, confirms her compromised status. No one here is a blameless “white dove,” but rather more common gray ones, marked by nuanced contradictions.
“It’s a sin to forget those we lost, and we have to do them justice,” Socorro solemnly says to Lucia, when the latter discusses her grandparents’ fate during the Argentine military dictatorship. But can Socorro ever come to accept that it’s as much of an offense to reduce one’s life to grief and fury, to squander it all for the promise of one day inflicting pain on the architects of our dejection? Saint-Martin rejects facile forgiveness, the kind that urges people to turn the other cheek and remain static in the face of transgressions. The path forward, he suggests, is not to absolve the perpetrators or deny the bleakness one has endured, but to keep memory unmovable with all its shades, including those etched in light. Enduring resistance can also look like surviving without succumbing to despair.
