Much foreign cinema is extremely artistic, forever exploring the expressionistic and visual representation of the filmic quality in ways mainstream Hollywood tend to neglect. Lock Up (aka Cruzando El Límite) is no different in this respect. It makes you think. It asks you to willingly participate with the on-screen material in-depth. However, foreign cinema is not without familiar structure, nor without its responsibility to communicate themes and messages to an audience in an understandable and entertaining way.
Centring around Fran, a teenager who is distant from his father and society, we follow his path of self-destruction, as the chasm created from lack of any values and responsibility for his own life see his desperate father resort to a last ditch effort, in which he has Fran sent off to CIMCA (a behavioural correctional facility). We follow his struggles there as Fran and other teens undergo systematic brainwashing and torture. Interestingly enough the film also follows his father through his own internal anguish.
The representations of the common, apathetic, modern teenager; the confused and adapting parental figures; and the controlling and asphyxiating pressure from a seemingly fascist system, will be all too familiar to audiences young and old. Marcel Borràs as Fran carries his performance wonderfully and the chemistry, the electric spark, that is the collision between the old value system and the new world of chaos is felt between himself and the more than competent Adolfo Fernandez as his father. I could not mark any of the performances in this film as weak, as each player hits their mark and opens the audience up to really empathise with their all too familiar (even if quite exaggerated) situations.
The films cinematic technique does not falter. Director Xavi Giménezs use of the cinematic mise-en-scene is solid, no doubt. Theres a heavy reliance on symmetry and contrast. This cleverly corresponds with the Spanish original title of not crossing the limit or the line, and what we see is an unsteady, unruly, camera jumping into a sensible and controlled form as we experience Fran and Adolfos scenes simultaneously. The differences in aesthetic really do get the message across.
Symmetry plays a big part, from the opening shot of a red dot darting back and forth along the centre of the screen, to a webcam conversation in which Fran is centre frame, to the facility in which a large yellow line cuts certain sets in half. Some of that uneasy work is thrown in with Adolfo Fernandezs charcter, as were shown through cutting how frantic his state of mind really is.
Where I feel the film lets itself down is its expression of these ideas through the narrative. The characters develop at a slow pace because events unfold themselves for us in an odd way. The film opens in a manner that doesnt fit what follows (however enjoyable the opening is). There are a lot of ideas introduced but many dont feel as if they have a point or work. They have a place within the general context and grand scheme of everything, but it all feels unrefined.
In the opening act a lot of seeds are planted which come to fruition later in the plot, but although the ideas start off interesting, a good majority of them taper off. As a result, events dont seem to be heading anywhere. As for right wing criticisms of the film, these are undermined as the film is much more about a broken connection between father and son than it is about fighting an oppressive system. I can see why this system and facility is important and ties in (because they are metaphors of the struggle between parental figures and their offspring) but its done so in a way that doesnt feel completely connected.
With Lock Up, it is so hard not to make connections to films such as A Clockwork Orange, because this film, on the surface, tries to sell itself as something along those lines However, Lock Up is NOT A Clockwork Orange. I would argue that these ideas are pushed into the background because they dont match up with the intimate themes of the bond between parents and their children that the film tries to explore. And its made all the more worthwhile because of the glimmer of hope that, every so often, shines throughout the material.
Overall Verdict: Despite the lack of coherency and the fact that the film has a bitter taste to it, Lock Up is an interesting and worthwhile watch
Reviewer: Sam Love