So there’s this Letterboxd challenge where each week you have to watch a movie that satisfies a particular prompt. The first one is a movie from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala.

So this is a Guatemalan film, shot by a Guatemalan director; its characters (and the cast) are Mayan, and the film is in Kaqchikel, not Spanish. And so here’s a film from a country that I’ve never seen a movie from, and it’s in a language that I’d never even heard of before this, and yet… it feels very familiar.

Part of that is no doubt just because it’s telling a coming-of-age story, and there are certain beats that those hit. But part of it, too, is that the director studied film in Paris, and so stylistically, this is doing a fairly straight-up sort of European art house thing. And I don’t want to be too critical about that — it’s doing it very well. It’s well-shot and well-directed. But it’s also stylistically doing some very familiar stuff, in a way that feels like it doesn’t quite do justice to the characters.

Because the characters are great. This is set in the present day, and the world is flat — they’re riding in American pickup trucks — but at the same time, there is real sense of traditionalism and an indigenous culture that is aware of the larger culture outside, but not necessarily full of it. And the characters and actors bring a kind of matter-of-fact groundedness to the movie, in a way that cuts through the mannered arthouse style. The movie has gorgeous landscape shots, but fundamentally, it’s at its best when it’s letting people just hang out in groups and sorta be themselves. (Though of course, they’re all acting, even as they seem totally real.)

So I could wish the movie leaned a bit harder into its distinctive elements; but end of the day, taking the movie for what it is, rather than what I’d want it to be, it’s a solid film. And at 90 minutes, it’s never at risk of overstaying its welcome. Recommended.