There’s a slow inevitable rhythm to Carlos Reygadas’ cruelly beautiful second feature, Battle In Heaven. As doomed protagonist Marcos trudges toward a terrible purification, each lingering shot seems increasingly foreboding until finally, a breathtaking 360-degree trawl around a Mexico City apartment block segues into the year’s most brutal scene.
With its heady concoction of mystical schematics, Moorish arthouse visuals and grim social reality, Battle In Heaven possesses an audacious, if disquieting magnificence. Inevitably though, the film has caused controversy, not to mention discomfort among audiences. At the recent Edinburgh Film Festival, Reygadas was questioned – not for the first time – about his dismal representation of his native city, an odd line of inquiry given the cerebral, allegorical nature of his work.
Certainly, the Mexico depicted is hardly tourist-board approved – a hazy, queasy place where bored, rich teenage girls turn tricks for the hell of it and the poor kidnap each other’s children as a means of making ends meet.
“But it’s the truth,” protests Anapola, when I meet her. “It’s not a religious film or a social film, it’s a symbolic one, but that’s what my country is like. It’s a third world country. In the group of me and my friends, everybody has been affected by a kidnapping at one point or other. It’s a big problem in Mexico.”
Anapola, like her co-stars, had never acted before Battle In Heaven. A sculptress and poet, she came to the production quite by chance.
“I had heard of Carlos before the film,” says Anapola. “I knew he was an interesting guy doing interesting work. And my cousin called me up one day and said he was holding auditions and to go with her. But I wasn’t interested. Then the production company called me after Carlos had seen me in some photographs. And I thought ‘bullshit’. But I ended up going along anyway and then I’m in this room with all these beautiful women, thinking ‘What am I doing here?’ And that’s how it started.”
In the film, Anapola plays Ana, the promiscuous bohemian daughter of wealthy general, who prostitutes herself for pleasure and sleeps with the film’s protagonist, a chauffeur on the verge of total mental breakdown.
“For me, every time I see the movie I get a different sensation from my character,” she explains. “I still don’t know how to explain her. Sometimes watching the film at festivals I think she’s just a selfish bitch. But sometimes I have a complete view of her. She’s doing things because she wants to, but there’s still a tenderness about her. That transcends everything. But it’s important for the movie that she could be many different things. Like Carlos says, even the title of the movie is there to evoke, not explain. It’s a very personal movie in that way. Everyone sees it differently.”
Some critics have also taken issue with Carlos Reygadas’ use of non-professional actors in a film that depicts live, and frequently queasy sex acts.
The opening scene sees Anapola Mushkadiz performing fellatio on the dishevelled, much older central character. The 23-year-old, a gorgeous girl adorned with Buddhist tattoos and shells in her dreadlocks, insists, however, that there was no exploitation involved.
“Well, I didn’t have a script so I never really knew anything about my scenes”, she admits. “But I have a lot of faith in Carlos. From the day we met I really liked him. At the beginning though I thought, well, this might be a problem for my family. I personally wouldn’t care. I think the human body is a beautiful thing. But after I saw Japon, Carlos’ first film, and realised the poetic way he films sex, I knew it would be alright. The sex scenes he shot for Battle In Heaven have no relation to pornography. They’re art.”