Mountains
Every afternoon, as Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) pulls into his driveway after work, one of his neighbors, like clockwork, walks by his home talking on his cell phone. Sometimes they greet each other, others they simply perform this unspoken, synchronized ritual we can assume has happened for years. Each instance of this interactions is shot from the same angle to visually reaffirm the notion of a treasured routine—which becomes even more noticeable when absent. Partly a tribute to the routine occurrences that collectively make a place feel like one belongs, Monica Sorelle’s delicately galvanizing slice-of-life debut “Mountains,” set in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, overflows with such details.
Reserved but never one to stand for injustice, Xavier finds himself in a compromised position as he works demolishing properties that will be turned into luxury homes not intended to house locals. The operations have gotten too close to his own doorstep for comfort. Nearby, a new, more spacious home for sale catches his eye. Could it be time for a new start? Without calling much attention to them, the filmmaker makes clear who the desired prospects to inhabit it are, and they certainly don’t look or sound like Xavier and his wife Esperance (a radiant Sheila Anozier), both working-class immigrants from Haiti.
Picking up gossip along the way, Esperance walks around the neighborhood exchanging pleasantries with people who have for long been fixtures in her life, just as she has been one in theirs. But for as much Sorelle and cinematographer Javier Labrador Deulofeu revel in immortalizing the colorful, lived-in streets of this community, she also engages with the nagging feeling of impermanence all immigrants share, being in another country while thinking about the one left behind. For Xavier, the bridge between him and Haiti is a radio program on news from his embattled Caribbean homeland. The body language and stoic demeanor of Nazaire (an actor who’s previously had small roles in TV and film) transmit an imposing fortitude, and at times inflexibility, while still allowing for gentleness.
Sorelle’s “Mountains” joins other recent American productions such as “On the Seventh Day,” about Mexican immigrants from the state of Puebla in New York, or “Menashe,” following a Hasidic Jewish father, that document ethnic enclaves existing parallel to the country’s mainstream society where life often unfolds in a language other than English. These universes full of stories refuse to be homogenized into an indistinct mass, straddling a degree of inevitable assimilation with a resilient conviction to maintain their identity.
