Devil May Care: Bucio’s Tantalizing Premise Fizzles Out
With an enigmatic premise and a formidably morbid title, Ernesto Martinez Bucio’s debut The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) is the type of Neo-realist nightmare which is not a pleasurable viewing experience but makes an indelible impression. It’s 1990s Mexico City, and a family is primed to fall through the cracks due to a mysterious set of circumstances. Arguably, Buscio’s procedure is almost too mysterious, willfully withholding information to reflect the perspectives of children who have absorbed and are reflecting tendencies of mental illness. Pope John Paul II might be splashed all over the television set with a visit to the country, but what he represents is an inaccessible figment.
When a passel of brand new shoes show up on their doorstep, it appears to announce the disappearance of Judith (Micaela Gramajo), a nurse who is the mother of five young children. Romana (Carmen Ramos), their schizophrenic grandmother, who believes the devil left the shoes, is left to care for the brood as father Emiliano (Bernardo Gamboa) leaves to find their mother, whose disappearances seem to be a common occurrence. But when Emiliano also fails to return, the grandmother’s rumination on the devil seems to take hold on the children’s minds.
The level of familial dysfunction and menace makes The Devil Smokes feel like a mashup of Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket (1965) and Jorge Michel Grau’s cannibal clan shriek We Are What We Are (2010), but doesn’t descend into the heart of the maelstrom as acutely as either of those references suggest. We glimpse the children’s mother removing her nurse uniform in public, disappearing with the opening credits, which suggests the devil doesn’t let go of any of his instruments, even after they’re no longer useful. The most troubling behaviors are exhibited in the younger, more impressionable children, Elsa (Mariapau Bravo Avina) and Tomas (Rafael Nieto Martinez), who are more prone to taking their grandmother’s sentiments to heart. Tomas prays directly to the devil while Elsa believes the schizophrenic visions of little men breaking into the house are real.
Bucio’s unwillingness to divulge what’s actually going on with the parents, which sounds an awful lot like it’s also mental illness related, forces us into the uncomfortable, dysfunctional womb of a home quickly collapsing in disarray. We don’t get to differentiate too much between the children other than their age, with Vanessa (Laura Uribe Rojas) and Victor (Donovan Said), the two eldest, seeming a bit more resistant to their grandmother’s tendencies. But they also give into the fear of an impending void, which results in Vanessa calling the police one night when the electricity goes out. Social Services follows suit, and an end to their troubles seems imminent. But then grandmother suggests they each burn a prized possession, Tomas offers one more plea to the devil by candlelight and the film hiccups into horror territory before flinging us into the end credits. While some of this energy might have assisted the narrative’s slow descent into chaos, The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) does string us along on an eerie path, depositing us into the unsettling without laboring the film’s dalliance with genre.
Reviewed on February 15th at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival (75th edition) – Perspectives. 97 mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
 Review ★★★ . Visit IONCINEMA.com!){kind=link}