‘Upon Open Sky’ Review – Sympathy for Teenage Vengeance

Upon Open Sky (A cielo abierto) is a coming-of-age film, a road trip film, a film about grief and revenge—it’s a lot of things—but it’s also a ’90s film. There’s no narrative reason that demands the Mexican film be set in a world before mobile phones and high-speed internet, but filmmakers Mariana and Santiago Arriaga elected to keep the script in the era it was written in. Mariana and Santiago are the children of Oscar-nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, Babel) and sought to keep their father’s script, which they uncovered while cleaning their parents’ home, as intact and unchanged as possible.

But the film, which has the difficult task of balancing dangerous, immature violence with affecting teenage relationships, soon reveals the quiet benefits of taking place three decades in the past. Salvador (Theo Goldin) is twelve when he survives a car crash on the rural roads of Coahuila, a northern region of Mexico—his father (Manolo Cardona) does not. Two years later, it’s Sal’s brother Fernando (Máximo Hollander) who’s struggling the most with grief, intent on hunting down the truck driver responsible for the crash and killing their father.

As “Sal” and “Fer” (nicknames inherited from their father; perhaps a way of keeping him alive) leave suburban safety with their stepsister Paula (Federica García) in tow, their youthful unpreparedness becomes clearer with every mile they draw closer to the confrontation. You find yourself revisiting the film’s 1995 setting in your mind; if this road trip happened 28 years ago, then Salvador, Fernando, and Paula would all now be in their 40s, living presumably normal, well-adjusted lives and reflecting on the fact that the day they truly started overcoming their grief was also the darkest and most dangerous moment of their young lives. Upon Open Sky becomes a film about looking back; the tension, sorrow, and catharsis felt watching the teenagers’ foundational journey is presumably felt by the characters themselves were they to remember it today.

Mariana and Santiago approach the main trio with a curiosity free from judgment, as if it wasn’t simply a case of directors trusting their actors on set, but storytellers trusting the characters to guide the story with little need for stylistic or narrative intervention. The resulting story can, at times, feel unhurried and unrefined to the point of frustration, but the filmmakers clearly think it’s the most natural and viable way to document a journey from unfettered grief to something resembling closure.

As Fernando closes in on his mark, Lucio Estrada (Julio César Cedillo), we see the extent to which his invented reasoning of why this man should die has gripped him. Were it not for Lucio, their father would still be alive today, but there’s no consideration for the complicated, inexpressible ways that trauma has imprinted on Lucio in Fernando’s single-minded vow of vengeance. With Fernando, we get to see the cinematic archetype of grief-revenge contrast with a mundane, everyday world. Instead of his fixation coloring and shaping his surroundings in true neo-noir fashion, the teenager has to wilfully persuade those around him to jump on his vengeful bandwagon—which only makes it seem more misguided.

Coahuila offers a sparse liminal space […] where the teenagers’ impulses and actions bounce back in full volume.

The promise of violence that propels Fernando and Salvador away from their middle-class haven into an unforgiving countryside isn’t a fixed, absolute necessity; the filmmakers think it more important for our characters to question how flawed and unsatisfactory their mission might turn out. Upon Open Sky isn’t a white-knuckle thriller; their confrontation with Lucio isn’t something that causes drastic, violent mistakes and sets law enforcement on their tail. Instead, Coahuila offers a sparse liminal space where morality exists in its most elemental form—an echo chamber where the teenagers’ impulses and actions bounce back in full volume.

Does the film’s interpretation of wealthy teens kidnapping, threatening, and holding hostage a poor rural laborer as a necessary step to their growing up hold water? It’s certainly one of the more polarizing elements in Guillermo Arriaga’s script, even more than the two brothers’ attraction to their stepsister Paula. It’s a symptom of directors Mariana and Santiago approaching their characters with zero judgment, letting them clumsily search through the muddle of their internal chaos with the hope of reaching that clear, open sky.

When Fernando involuntarily kills a farmer’s wandering goats on an open road, he has to challenge how simplistic and warped his understandings of violence and honor are. Salvador’s amnesia of the events of his father’s death means that each successive recollection challenges his passive, passenger-seat place in Fernando’s plan. Despite not being related to the person whom her stepbrothers are grieving, Paula has arguably the most compelling journey: her own grief can’t be cured with a single act of revenge, and joining in Fer and Sal’s sorrow feels like not just validation for her own, but an invitation to be part of a family.

Upon Open Sky may feel to some like a wonky debut from impressive short form filmmakers, but there’s something distinct and thorny about its heart: a mission of questionable integrity, a road trip to commit a very adolescent violence, a quasi-family resisting the restrictions of grief in confused ways. In the end, the film showcases both the benefits and drawbacks of letting your characters roam free in search of catharsis; these teens may not mature to the audience’s satisfaction, but they make a courageous first step towards becoming a new kind of whole.

Read our exclusive interview with directors Mariana and Santiago Arriaga here.