Tochtli (Miguel Valverde) has exquisitely refined tastes. He is sitting in a room with an elegant display of hats flanked by a strange display of desert taxidermy: leaping hares, cacti and all that. He chooses a burgundy velvet cocked hat, puts on a jacket with ornate epaulettes, grabs the reins of his pet pony, and walks through his sprawling, luxurious, one-of-a-kind home.
It's his birthday; He looks to be about 10 years old and please forgive me for not catching that specific detail, as his ornate surroundings are quite overwhelming. He sits down to enjoy a meal and gifts prepared by his father, Yolcaut (Manuel García-Rulfo), although Yolcaut doesn't actually organize things, he simply tells other people what to do, for example, his legion of tough guys with cowboy hat. sycophants and his loving elderly housekeeper, Itzpapalotl (Mercedes Hernández).
Director: Manolo Caro
Writers: Nicolás Giacobone, Juan Pablo Villalobos
Stars: Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Miguel Valverde, Raúl Briones
What is the best way to describe Tochtli's life? As if it had been curated by Salvador Dalí and Howard Hughes? Yes maybe. He never leaves this palace, which is located somewhere in a remote area of Mexico, and since the story is told entirely from his point of view and has little context for his existence, we never learn exactly where this occurs. , and how big this house is, or what year it is (some visual cues lead us to assume it's sometime in the 1990s) and one can't help but wonder what exactly Yolcaut does to make a living in such luxury.
Tochtli is pampered, protected and intelligent. The only mention of his mother is that she doesn't have one, and she doesn't seem to understand the importance of having one, although she probably will eventually. Anyway: it's her birthday, and what she wants most is an African pygmy hippo to add to her private zoo, which features zebras, monkeys, jaguars, tigers, and probably more we don't see. However, she doesn't get the hippo. She has to settle for a rare and endangered bird. She is disappointed. I'm sure we can all relate.
The mystery of Yolcaut's wealth will not be for long. We understand it, but Tochtli doesn't. Apparently it's quite normal for her father to sit at a table counting piles and piles and piles of cash, quizzing Tochtli about whether a shot to a certain part of the body will kill a person or just send them to the ICU. The governor comes to dinner and, almost shouting, the subtext of his conversation with Yolcaut is a statement about who has more power in these places, and he is certainly not the official official.
We took a look at a news report that labels Yolcaut as the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel (note: this is the real-life cartel that El Chapo once ran), so there's your answer, bulb fish. Tochtli has a private tutor named Mazatzin (Raúl Briones), a kind and kind-hearted soul who made a moral commitment at some point to be the highest-paid teacher in all of Mexico. Mazatzin nurtures the boy's intellect and is surely treading on thin ice here since he has such intimate access to Yolcaut's most prized possession; Everyone sits down to breakfast and, while Yolcaut criticizes “sissies,” Mazatzin insists that it is okay to be “a ladybug.” Veiled threats emerge. Meanwhile, all Tochtli can do is raise his desire to own an African pygmy hippopotamus at every opportunity.
We soon witness Tochtli witnessing things he shouldn't be witnessing, such as a man being tortured in one of the many rooms of his house (isn't there a better place around here to torture a man?). He enters a secret building full of weapons, chooses a snub-nosed revolver, and puts it in his pocket. Yolcaut says “they” told him he needed “a vacation,” so they get fake passports with fake names and fly to Namibia for a while.
It seems that Yolcaut's “needs” fit very well with Tochtli's “need” to add a hippopotamus to his animal collection. They go on safari and see elephants, giraffes, leaping antelopes and wild dogs. In the end they will find some pygmy hippos, because Yolcaut's mantra, which he makes his son repeat, is “Yolcaut always can.” And you cannot “always be able” if you are not a manly man.
Down the Rabbit Hole is an immersive, quietly hypnotic tapestry of moving characters, themes, and visuals, expressed in a tonally tense narrative peppered with darkly funny satire and intellectual drama. Caro shows no interest in overtly manipulating any emotions we might experience while entrenched in Totchtli's life of extreme luxury and even more extreme isolation.
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