By Michael Sicinski

Ariel Escalante’s film resembles a well-worn vein in global art cinema: the elderly man being crushed under the weight of inexorable forces, most often those of economic neoliberalism. We see these films a lot because, frankly, this is the dominant story of our times. But obviously there are a number of different ways to go about a project like this, and Domingo and the Mist takes a worthy tack by departing from the prosaic realism that typically defines this sort of work. 

Domingo (a fierce Carlos Ureña) is an old dairy farmer in the hills of Costa Rica; the state has routed a new highway right through his village, and he is one of a trio of dead-enders who refuse to sell their property. But there’s something else at work within this conventional tale. It’s not just that the farm is in abject disrepair, although that’s part of it. (Domingo inherited the once-thriving enterprise from his father-in-law, but not before the man sold off most of his cattle for drinking money.) The primary reason Domingo insists on staying is that, every night, his home is blanketed in a thick white fog, and he firmly believes that this is an ongoing visitation from his dead wife. Domingo’s daughter (Sylvia Sossa), however, doesn’t buy it. “If mom were coming back,” she reasonably asks, “wouldn’t she visit me too?”

And so, Escalante introduces a wrinkle of complexity that many such films do not. That’s because the director realizes that two things can be true at the same time. On the one hand, Domingo has his rights, and ought not to be trampled by so-called progress; on the other hand, he’s delusional. Domingo may be proud, but he is a danger to others, and above all to himself. As a sophomore feature, Domingo and the Mist shows great promise, precisely because Escalante is dedicated to facing social contradictions head-on.