Foreign Language Hall of Fame

Let me just start out with what I thought the film did competently, because frankly, I believe everything else was executed poorly. Visually, the film looked pretty nice, with a few stand-out shots here and there...nothing extraordinary or exceptional though. Unfortunately, that's where my short-lived compliments must end.

My biggest problem with the film, is how seriously it took itself, while simultaneously providing nothing of substance to the issue of immigration, other than scratching it from the surface. Even if I take away all of my criticisms of the movie that are on a technical level, what's left is still a giant missed opportunity, that lacks power and strength in expression.

Out of everything, the aspect I absolutely despise and can't forgive about "Entre Nos", is the chosen music throughout the movie. I genuinely can't stand when film-makers heavily utilise a soundtrack or a score, in order to manipulate unearned emotions out of the viewer. This is the case of almost every single scene in the film, they all kept begging for an emotional reaction out of me, but instead, all they got was a shaking head and rolling eyes.

The irony of this situation is, we're featured with a helpless family in an unfortunate condition, accompanied by sad piano and guitar music wherever they go, only to make me as a viewer become very detached and careless of their circumstance. The tools that the director exploited in order to make the occurring happenings more effective, only made them seem fake and laughable. For example, a montage of scenes was slapped into the movie, which contained the family happily collecting cans off the streets, meanwhile, a happy go lucky instrumental was playing in the background. This generated so much laughter out of me, because it's an extremely clichéd thing to put in a film.

I'm not even going to go in depth about the acting that ranged from terrible to painfully mediocre, or the confusing change of audio levels during the latter half of the movie. Even though they're inexcusable, they're still overshadowed by other more insufferable aspects, such as the ending, which wraps everything up with a nicely colourful ribbon. The conclusion to the film avoids having a lasting impact, and prefers a safe, out of nowhere, clumsily put together, happy turnaround.

For an 80 minutes long film, my experience felt like an eternity. I was very surprised by how little I found in what's supposed to be an effective movie, only to come out of it very exhausted by the repeating chain of events, lack of depth, and overall poor presentation. What a disappointing 80 minutes of my life.