aristotle and the secrets of the universe

Subplots about Dante’s ambivalence toward his own Mexican identity or Aristotle’s contempt toward his (seemingly friendly) classmates are developed so haphazardly I can only assume they’re relics from the source material that got hacked to bits in translation.īut Aristotle and Dante finally gets back on track with Dante’s return midway through. These developments in their lives feel halfhearted, perhaps because Aristotle and Dante seems more interested in who these people are together than who they might be apart. We watch as he gets a job, meets a girl, wonders darkly what really happened to the incarcerated brother that his parents (Eugenio Derbez and Veronica Falcón) refuse to talk about at all. Meanwhile, Aristotle has plenty on his mind besides his distant best friend. In the interim, Dante’s presence is reduced to letters to Aristotle that we hear in voiceovers, chronicling a fraught and sometimes painfully lonely journey of self-discovery. Its narrative stretches over an entire year, staying with Aristotle as Dante moves away at the end of the summer of ’87 to move back in the summer of ’88. In fairness, Aristotle and Dante has a lot of plot to cover. And Gonzales struggles in the first half of the film to construct a plausible human being out of a Natalie-Portman-in- Garden– State-sized collection of aggressively adorable quirks. Pelayo is a champion brooder, but is let down by a script short on nuance and depth. In the whirlwind, her young leads - both relative newcomers - struggle to find their footing.

Perhaps too much so, even for a narrative built on an instant connection: Writer-director Aitch Alberto shoves them together so insistently that we’re barely allowed to get to know them as individuals first, or to savor the heady process by which interest becomes fondness becomes something like profound, lasting love. The bond they form is intense and immediate. Where Ari is angst and self-doubt, Dante, the son of a relatively well-to-do academic couple (Kevin Alejandro and Eva Longoria), is all sweetness and light - a veritable manic pixie dream boy, down to his cutesy habit of going barefoot whenever possible.

Aristotle is a working-class loner simmering with a quiet rage and resentment he himself doesn’t entirely understand, which we learn because he basically describes himself as such in the overlong opening voiceover.īored one stifling summer day, he goes for a dip in the community pool and surfaces to find newcomer Dante (Reese Gonzalez) peering down at him, looking positively angelic in the sunlight. Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)Ĭast: Max Pelayo, Reese Gonzales, Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, Veronica Falcón, Kevin Alejandroīased on the acclaimed YA bestseller by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, the drama centers on two Mexican American teenagers in late-’80s El Paso.

Aristotle and the secrets of the universe