By Steve Erickson

Pepe is an immense achievement: one of the most formally and politically radical narrative films to turn up on the international festival circuit in 2024.

Pepe, directed by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias. At the 2024 New York Film Festival, screening on October 5, 6, and 9.

Pepe sounds like a Netflix docuseries: a chronicle of the stranger-than-fiction fate of a hippo once owned by Pablo Escobar. Thankfully, Dominican director Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’ approach is infinitely more adventurous. This is an immense achievement: one of the most formally and politically radical narrative films to turn up on the international festival circuit in 2024. De Los Santos Arias uses the trials and tribulations of Pepe — granted the power of speech in a voice-over delivered in several languages — as an illustration of colonialism. The hippo’s parents were stolen from Namibia and brought to the Americas. But Pepe also works at face value as an exploration of animal rights. It delves into the consciousness of beasts — and the danger of humans misunderstanding it.

The very first shot of Pepe is a white frame. Visually, the only variation we see comes from damage to the film stock; the sound of a helicopter pilot calling out to a Corporal Gonzales intrudes upon the image’s blankness. Then, the hippo introduces himself. Named Pepe, he’s confused that he has been resurrected as a ghost. Caged in Pablo Escobar’s private zoo in his Hacienda Napoles estate, he escaped to the surrounding river (as did most of the other animals) following the drug lord’s 1993 death. What follows is not a straightforward, linear narrative, but a story that takes vast leaps in time and space. A group of German tourists are seen on safari in Namibia. The director De Los follows people and animals down the Magdalena river for brief intervals, moving on to another one after a few minutes. Rejected by Escobar’s menagerie, Pepe is forced to live on his own. One section details the rocky relationship of fisherman Candelario (Jorge Puntillon Garcia), who encounters the hippo while working, and his wife Bethania (Sor Maria Rios). These scenes are the ones where Pepe comes closest to conventional characters and storytelling, but they make up a small portion of the film.

De Los Santos Arias’ style is accomplished and eclectic,to say the least. He’s fond of stationary long shots. Often, the camera position, floated in a river, suggests a hippo-eyed-view, looking quizzically at people. Drones are used for distant, overhead views. On the one hand, the cinematography can be breathtakingly pretty,but Pepe never lets one forget the animal’s feelings of loss –and the military squad that is out to kill him. The calm of an aerial shot of Escobar’s mansion and its surrounding streets, as we watch cars slowly pass, is broken by pilots’ chatter. De Los Santos Arias lets these images play out, moving the camera further back, till he cuts to white. The film’s view of nature leans towards ‘objective’ abstraction; lush shots of the river are stripped of narrative intent. Genuine documentary footage is integrated with staged scenes.

Along with its fascinating visuals, Pepe is a film about language. The hippo speaks to us as a ghost, unable to understand his ability to talk. (Four actors, each speaking a different tongue, represent his voice.) I’ve often wondered: what do animals make of the symbolic value humans place on them? Could they understand it? Would goats be baffled by their association with witchcraft and the devil? Pepe muses on these and other issues. At one point, he gazes at his own representation: he glimpses a cartoon about his life that is being shown playing on a living room TV.

Does all that sound like it could be overly didactic? Pepe might have gone that way. A few scenes are close to being lectures in post-colonial theory. The film works so well because it focuses on the threatening drama of the present moment. Pepe speaks about his own experience and the way he’s perceived: “in their story, I became a monster, an Other that scared everyone.” Brought to the Americas, he’s seen as important only insofar as his story intersects with that of humans (especially one as infamous as Pablo Escobar.) In the end, he’s perceived as a danger, with has some basis in fact, given that his presence endangered local fishermen. Pepe is never seen as a being with a life that matters for its own sake.

Pepe has yet to be acquired by a U.S. distributor. (De Los Santos Arias’ previous film, Cocote, did receive a brief release here in 2018.) American audiences will encounter difficulties with this film: they’ve grown wary of subtitles, let alone the degree of experimentation Pepe embraces with a vengeance. But grappling with its eccentricities  is well worth the effort. De Los Santos Arias described his earlier feature, 2015’s Santa Teresa & Historias, as “an anarchic rebellion of multiple narratives, colors and formats…in a drive towards permanent revolution.” Pepe continues that fierce critical critique with a rare combo of formal beauty and political astuteness.

Steve Erickson writes about film and music for Gay City News, Slant Magazine, the Nashville Scene, Trouser Press, and other outlets. He also produces electronic music under the tag callinamagician. His latest album, Bells and Whistles, was released in January 2024, and is available to stream here.

Title: Notice to Quit (2024)
Director: Simon Hacker 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Simon Hacker 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3.25/5

In a solidly built feature debut by writer-director Simon Hacker, Notice to Quit follows a simple premise: A deadbeat dad who hasn’t seen his daughter in months suddenly finds himself saddled with her care. Said daughter, 10-year-old Anna (Kasey Bella Suarez), is distraught over her and her mom’s impending move from New York City to Florida (a “swamp,” Anna gripes). On the child’s last day in the city, she runs away to spend time with her dad, Andy (Michael Zegen).

The emotional beats of this fast-paced dramedy won’t surprise anyone. Across genres, from kids’ movie Despicable Me (2010) to the grittier Logan (2017), a cantankerous father figure is forced into babysitting a precocious young girl before softening towards her by film’s end. In Notice to Quit, washed up rental agent/hustler Andy and whipsmart Anna play their roles dutifully.

While it’s not the familiar plot that carries this film, Hacker deftly creates a bursting love letter to working class New Yorkers, in all their brash and unscrupulous swagger. Viewers find themselves thrown onto a roller coaster ride of chaos and city hijinks, recalling the punishing pace of Uncut Gems (but without the debilitating sense of dread). From finding a cockroach in a diner to arguing with your gruff-but-secretly-kind immigrant landlord, to having your financial solvency center around the city’s housing market, the movie taps into a very real New York experience—and splashes it on screen for audiences to laugh at (or commiserate with). 

Gender: 3.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Although Anna has a headlining role with plenty of screentime, Hacker clearly has his sights set on main character Andy. It’s Andy’s hectic day we follow, and Anna is simply the comet that’s come crashing into his punishing routine of showing apartments and ducking shady colleagues to whom he owes money. Anna does have a positive role as a kid who’s balanced as both street-smart yet vulnerable, but she remains two-dimensional throughout the film.

In a key role (albeit one that’s mostly offscreen), Anna’s mom Liz (Isabel Arraiza) avoids the tiresome stereotypes often applied to the exes of main male characters. Sure, she does gripe about Andy being a useless father, but viewers are given good reason to agree with her. (Andy is a mess.) So many scripts subtly chastise women for working full time, seen in Mrs. Doubtfire’s (1993) judgment of Sally Field’s career-oriented character, not to mention just about the entirety of the Christmas movie catalog. Notice to Quit never falls into the trope of suggesting that Liz is somehow overbearing, or needs to change.

But in the end, the cast is filled mostly with men. Brokers, butchers, landlords, doormen—working class New York looks like a man’s world. The only minor characters we see with more gender balance appear in expected places: caregivers such as Liz, who works as a hospital nurse, and Anna’s babysitter Maria (Feiga Martinez), plus a smattering of former and would-be tenants looking to rent from Andy. On the plus side, this depiction of the city doesn’t ring untrue; it just makes for another movie that doesn’t bother sketching outside gender conventions.

Race: 4/5

On the other hand, even with its white main character, Notice to Quit embraces the racial and ethnic diversity of its setting through supporting and background roles. This isn’t Sex and the City’s whitewashed brunch utopia, nor is this the “urban” (read: Black and Latino) hellscape regurgitated by so many movies centering around white leads from the 1980s and ‘90s. Having lived in New York City myself for over a decade, it’s hard to specify what makes Notice to Quit’s racial inclusivity so potent beyond the fact that it just “feels right.”

In the most prominent roles for people of color, Latina Suarez and Puerto Rican Arraiza play Anna and Liz, respectively. Their ethnicities are naturally woven into the film: Whether it’s speaking occasional Spanish, to Liz’s no-nonsense but loving approach to parenting Anna, cultural markers feel neither exotified nor ignored. Hacker’s comfort level around this comes into sharp focus when Anna translates for a man speaking Spanish to Andy. It’s a small but effective bit of scripting that puts control in the hands of Latinos as Andy is left out of the conversation—a subtle power shift that mirrors how, in most parts of New York City, white people are in the minority. Even if this only happens briefly, it’s a positive (and realistic) setup that doesn’t resort to dull cliches about Latinos being potentially violent or “scary” in order for them to briefly have the upper hand around a white protagonist.

Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.58/5

For a simplistic story about a guy struggling to balance the demands of work and family, Notice to Quit stands out more for its Technicolor rendering of New York City, and the way it paints its hustlers with humor and affection. As lead actor Zegen succinctly puts it himself, “It’s not a deep movie. It’s just a good time.”

For better or worse, late September this year is certainly the time for animated robot movies. Fortunately, we got the “worse” out of the way last week with “Transformers One.” Now we can sit back and enjoy the “better” with “The Wild Robot.” Many people did indeed sit back and enjoy this movie, as the theater at my screening was more crowded than usual. The added cheering and laughter made the experience all the more endearing, and it was heartwarming to think of all the families bonding over their shared love of this movie.

Lupita Nyong’o stars as Roz, a robot programmed to help with tasks on a distant space colony. Something goes wrong with the delivery, and she winds up stranded on an island on Earth. Eager to help, but unable to find any humans to give her orders, she instead looks to the local animal population. She even takes the time to learn how animals communicate, to the point where she can filter their various squeaks, squawks, and other utterances into English in real time. And that’s how this becomes a talking animal movie.

Roz is eager to help, but the animals don’t necessarily want her help. Okay, they “decidedly” don’t want her help. At first, they’re all afraid of her, given that she’s gigantic, made of metal, dangerously confused, and relatively clumsy (she moves nimbly for a robot of her size, but isn’t built for the unpredictability of nature). Then they fight against her, knocking her down and stripping her of gears and features. She’s even attacked by her closest physical match, a bear named Thorn (Mark Hamill), who knocks down a cliff, causing her to crush a bird’s nest.

Roz sees that a single egg has survived, and the lifeform inside must be protected. She saves it from getting eaten by a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal) by launching the predator into a porcupine, though she instinctively helps him remove quills afterward. The egg hatches, and the gosling, named Brightbill, doesn’t see why Roz can’t be mother material. Roz is prepared to be a helper, but not a primary caregiver. In other words, she doesn’t have any programming that makes her fit to be a mother. “No one does,” says opossum Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), who becomes her mentor.

The rest of the movie is Roz trying to raise Brightbill (Kit Connor) as best as she can, knowing that she’ll have to teach him to swim, then fly, then leave for months on migration. The other geese tease him for coming from an unnatural family, but leader Longneck (Bill Nighy) sees that he only lives to help others, just like his adoptive mother. The migration makes for an adventure unto itself, as does Roz and the rest of the forest trying to make it through an unexpectedly harsh winter. On top of all that, Roz still recognizes an obligation to try to get to the human colony, and tracking robot Vontra (Stephanie Hsu) could arrive at any time. That the last matter probably should have been saved for a sequel is my only real gripe with the movie.

“The Wild Robot” came to theaters riding the single biggest wave of critical praise I’ve seen all year. The quantity of praise is well-deserved, as I can’t imagine anybody disliking this movie, but it might make it a tad vulnerable to expectations. I consider it “among” the best movies of the year, but I was never quite ready to hand it the top spot (still “Dune: Part Two,” by the way). Still, my heart melted at several points, whether it was from cuteness (the opossum family), sadness (the straining of the Roz/Brightbill relationship), or the sheer amount of love on display. By all means take the family to see this movie, turn it into a success, and encourage Hollywood to make more movies with this much heart.

Grade: B

“The Wild Robot” is rated PG for action/peril and thematic elements. Its running time is 101 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.