Film review: After Lucia an excruciating examination of school bullying

AFTER LUCIA

According to the media, bullying has become an epidemic. Is there more of it now than in previous years? That certainly appears to be the case in cinema, with After Lucia being at least the fourth film to be released in Hong Kong this year (after Disconnect, Kick-Ass 2 and the recent Carrie remake) that shows bullying in schools.

Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco's 2012 Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard award winner increases the misery, as the teenage bullying victim Ale (short for Alejandra) has recently been in a car accident which killed her mother. And although it's never explicitly spelled out, much of Ale (Tessa Ia) and her father Roberto's (Hernán Mendoza) behaviour after this tragedy can be ascribed to their still being emotionally traumatised.

In a bid to rid himself of the memories of the life they had before his wife Lucia's premature death, Roberto dumps their old car and moves with his daughter from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City, some 10 hours' drive away. A chef by trade, the grief-stricken widower finds work at a restaurant and immerses himself in the kitchen, hardly bothering with much else, including decorating his and Ale's new home.

Ale looks to be adjusting to life without Lucia better than Roberto. She makes friends at her new school, and is invited to spend a weekend with the group she's taken to hanging out with.

But her life becomes a living hell after she gets drunk and has sex with good-looking Jose (Gonzalo Vega Jnr), who records their lovemaking on his phone - though, he claims, it was not him who subsequently disseminated the video to the school's entire student body.