Critics – Final Reunion

A family's struggle with impending loss, as seen by one of its youngest members.

- By Alison Willmore

NAÍMA SENTÍES, THE FIRST-TIMER who plays 7-year-old Sol in Tótem, has the bright, animated face of a kid who can’t help but broadcast whatever she’s feeling in the moment. She gives the unforced performance of a child rather than a child actor, which means that when her face does go still, you can see her thinking. Over the course of the single day in which Lila Avilés’s extraordinary family drama unfolds, Sol grapples with something immense that she was already aware of in the abstract but has started to accept as an imminent reality. Her relatives have gathered in her grandfather Roberto’s (Alberto Amador) house to throw a birthday party for her artist father, Tona (Mateo García Elizondo), who has cancer. Though no one says as much out loud, the celebration is doubling as a goodbye, and you can almost feel the heat coming off Sol’s head as her brain whirls around the idea of mortality. Disappearing into her late grandmother’s ceramics studio to get some time alone with a purloined phone, she asks Siri when the world will end. The answer she gets, that Earth will be consumed by the sun when it becomes a red giant millions of years from now, doesn’t seem to be what she’s seeking.