Rolling Stone Menu ‘New Order’: Class War, Dismissed
Cinema provocateur Michel Franco reminds you that the revolution will not be televised it will be turned into tone-deaf, feel-bad posturing
By Neon Pictures
If you’ve found yourself having just too good a time lately and need that to come to an end, hotfoot it to
New Order, the new ordeal from Mexican director Michel Franco. In just 86 brisk, effectively brutalizing minutes, any tentative optimism you might have been feeling say, due to a jaunty walk to a newly-reopened movie theater in sunny weather will completely dissipate into a far more familiar downer fug. Not to suggest it’s all doom and depression! The film also makes you feel unpleasantly dirty.
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Like more than a few movies focused on the corruptions and comeuppances of the ultra-rich, Michel Franco’s “New Order” kicks off with a wedding. The bride is Marianne Novelo (Naian González Norvind), and her big day is unfolding in leisurely splendor at her family’s home in one of Mexico City’s wealthiest suburbs. It’s the event of the season, unless you count the violent uprising that has convulsed the city just beyond the house’s high walls, filling the streets with smoke, blood and bold, accusatory splashes of green paint. The horror at first plays out largely offscreen; a few guests are delayed, including the wedding officiant. But by the time someone turns on a