Canada: Friday, July 09, 2021
Sony Pictures Classics
for language and brief nudity
Academy-Award nominee Heidi Ewing's luminous, moving debut as a narrative filmmaker, follows a tender romance spanning decades. Starting in provincial Mexico and continuing as first Iván, then Gerardo, journey towards sharing a life together in New York City, I CARRY YOU WITH ME is an intimate love story, as well as a soulful rumination on family, sacrifice, regret, and ultimately, hope.
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Gregory M. - Rated it 3 out of 5
"I Carry You With Me" Based on true love, this decades spanning romance begins in Mexico between Iván (Armando Espitia), an aspiring chef and Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), a teacher. "I Carry You With Me" follows a tender romance spanning decades. Starting in provincial Mexico and continuing as first Iván, then Gerardo, journey towards sharing a life together in New York City, the film is an intimate love story, as well as a soulful rumination on family, sacrifice, regret, and ultimately, hope. The film traces both men’s lives from their childhoods in Mexico, through.the decisions that lead them into adulthood. Iván hopes to secure a spot in a restaurant’s kitchen while supporting his child. But the discovery of his relationship with Gerardo causes conflict, and in despair, he makes the arduous choice to cross the border into 'The United States', promising his son and his soulmate Gerardo that he will return. Their lives restart in incredible ways as societal pressure propels the couple to embark on a treacherous journey to New York with dreams, hopes, and memories in tow. Textured with small moments of intimacy, "I Carry You With Me" is also richly alive with the breadth of it's cross-cultural perspective and broad expanse of time. The vision is boldly original, an impressionistic, open-hearted take on 'The American Dream', told by a filmmaker drawing on her years of practice in capturing the human experience. It’s a love story about two men who continue to ask questions of themselves and of their lives. In many ways the film is about remembering and coming to terms with the past. There's such warmth and kindness in Iván’s voice, but through the narration.we get to hear his frustration. We hear some of his doubt and pain and how difficult it all really is. There's something in his eyes that matches Iván’s. There's a soulfulness, there's something very profound in his face. As the character evolves you hear the change in his voice because he’s paying the.price. Sometimes he’s resentful and sometimes he feels regret, and the price he pays for his decisions is real. One more thing about Fellini’s touch; we feel he was a master of memory, of making films where the character is regaled or haunted by the past, his childhood, the echoes of his parents. The film has a satisfying ending, where the one thing that’s for sure is that they’ve chosen each other. Every narrative is an ongoing narrative. There’s something that’s suspended in time about the ending because it's about an unknown future. Especially for immigrants, there are a lot of open-ended questions that don’t get answered, year after year. Everything else is an open question. This is an epic love story, based on a real-life relationship, which spans across.a few decades in time. The story takes place over generations and so the movie needs a sweeping, romantic quality to it. We see and feel their youth and experience their love. We feel deeply cinematic by nature and just need a different treatment entirely. What you’re seeing in the film is not scripted with them. It's material the film gathered over the last several years as a fly on the wall for important moments in their lives. It's about those intersections in various communities, those human things that make us all much more similar than different. It’s observational cinema verite. Today it’s so important to talk about real issues like immigration and homophobia, and this film touches on these realities that ws actually experienced first-hand. The macho culture in Mexico makes it so hard for homosexuality to be accepted and people struggle so much because of it. Immigrants are looking for a better future and make very tough decisions, even risking our own lives due to a lack of opportunity at home. We feel that there's a.lack of understanding and empathy in our society today for what immigrants go through. They've love to give and they work so hard to turn their dreams into reality. At a moment in time where there are so many sad events in the world, it’s important to share a personal story and encourage people in a small way not to be afraid to chase their dreams and to fight every day for their families. It's about to achieve our dreams, or even just to improve our quality of life. We abandon our own countries, our families and our kids who suffer in our absence. We hope that other immigrants who see this never stop believing in their dreams; that they don’t forget their families at home even if they're far away, because they sacrifice as much as we do. We've to maintain our freedom. We've to keep on our toes. We've to go with our instincts even within the apparatus of making a picture with eighty people. written by Gregory Mann