“American Meltdown” is a comic buddy picture that taps into the deep well of Millennial angst and grievance about a “system” that is finally so broken it doesn’t work for them. At all.

Like a lot of fiction and op ed essays about the large and maligned generation, it’s very much in the eye of the viewer — this perception that these mid-20s to late30somethings are either the first to figure out American capitalism, culture and politics is “rigged,” or simply the first to considering giving up trying to fix it.

It’s an indie film that reminds us there’s talent out there that mainstream distributors haven’t embraced — in front of and behind the camera. And fittingly enough for the subject generation, “Meltdown” feels self-satisfied but incomplete, with a finale that plays like a pulled-punch.

Jacki Von Preysing makes her feature film debut as Olivia, an interior designer who learns she needs to take “90 days off” so that her scummy “blame the unions” (there are none) employer (Bella Shaw) can avoid paying her “full time” wages, with benefits, and on the same day comes home to see that her SoCal rental house has just been ransacked.

Broke, blamed for the break-in by the lazy, dismissive Millennial cop (Shaun Boylan) and her creeper corporate landlord (Clayton Farris), in a house she can’t afford since her inheritance baby beau (Christopher Mychael Watson) ditched her for “an influencer,” on a “background check” waitlist for a job driving for one of those predatory rideshare services, Olivia’s delusions of The American Dream are tattered.

She stumbles into this photographer under a pier on the beach, who snaps a picture that makes her look like someone’s who’s died, or just given up. Then shutterbug Marí (Nicolette Sweeney) chases Olivia down and returns the wallet “you dropped.” As it’s not the right wallet, and the right one and the wrong one, both in Marí’s possession, are empty of cash, Olivia needs to look past “super sketchy” apologies and see the pickpocket for who she really is.

Unlike Olivia, Marí has dropped off the capitalism hamster-wheel, living hand-to-mouth, off-the-grid and in a van in the desert. When she’s in town, prowling this or that beach or street scene, she “only” steals “from those who deserve it.”

As the cop IDs Olivia as “Bougie,” we understand Marí’s mistake. She thought Olivia had money and takes pity on her when she realizes otherwise. And “sketchy” or not, Olivia could use a little company right now — for binge drinking, and for companionship in the tony and now scary house Olivia is afraid to sleep in alone.

An unlikely friendship drifts towards “partnership” as the movie hints at a big crime to come. Olivia is interviewed by a detective (DeMorge Brown) in the aftermath of that event, viewed in flashbacks as the script reconstructs the nature of Olivia and Marí’s relationship.

Olivia is passive. Marí seeks revenge or some form of rough justice. Olivia despairs at her plight — calmly.

“What’s the use of being calm,” Marí’ wants to know” “ANGRY people get s–t done!”

The leads and supporting players are make believable characters out of one and all. But writer-director Andrew Adams leaves out connecting scenes that would make the abrupt shifts of setting and attitude less jarring.

Expressions of generational angst and rage register. But while some seem rational and justified, others come off as “Ok Boomer” cant from folks who deserve at least some of the “entitled,” impatient and (intellectually and physically) “lazy” labeling and abuse tossed at them by their elders.

No matter where your birthday falls on the generational dividing line, “American Meltdown” never quite shakes the “letdown” it seems destined to become.

Sharper contrasts in the character’s arcs were called for, maybe a few pickpocket and anarchist politics lessons from the van-dweller jarring Ms. Buys-in into questioning her faith in a system that either denies her dreams, or is to blame for her having those dreams in the first place.

Whatever its failings, “American Meltdown” should inspire others to tackle this subject at this point in time. Because as bad as things might seem to Millennials and those coming up after them, something tells the rest of us that these will soon be the “good old days” for those who don’t consciously work, shop, vote and fight to change the future they so despair of facing.

Rating: TV-16+ (profanity)

Cast: Jacki Von Preysing, Nicolette Sweeney, Shaun Boylan, Clayton Farris, DeMorge Brown and Bella Shaw.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Andrew Adams. An MPX release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:22

Mexico City — 

He is among Mexico’s most celebrated novelists, historians and left-wing activists. But Paco Ignacio Taibo II is best known for his fictional alter ego: Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, a one-of-a-kind private eye confronting injustice, corruption and crime in the noir depths of 1970s Mexico City. The gumshoe’s exploits, punctuated with suspense, dark comedy and a motley cast unique to the demimonde of the Mexican capital, have been made into films and a Netflix series and translated into English and other languages.

Taibo, 75, has penned more than 40 books, among them nine Belascoarán mysteries, biographies (subjects include Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Gen. Francisco “Pancho” Villa) and ruminations on signature historic events, such as the 1968 Mexico City student protests, in which he was a participant.

The prolific author also serves as a kind of cultural commissar, heading the government’s publishing house, El Fondo de Cultura Económica, which has published 10,000-plus titles across genres in its august, 90-year history. El Fondo has bookstores in Mexico — the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking nation — and others throughout Latin America and Spain.

Taibo’s longtime friend and leftist compadre, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s former president, tapped him for the publishing post. López Obrador’s successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October, reappointed him to the post.

Taibo spoke to The Times at a cafe outside El Fondo’s main bookstore in Mexico City. The author, in jeans and a red polo shirt, chain-smoked Marlboros and sipped Coca-Cola — mainstays of a U.S. culture that he often disdains — as he held forth on literature, politics, reading in the digital age and mortality. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What is El Fondo de Cultura Económica?

El Fondo is a publisher with a degree of independence from the government, co-financed by the apparatus of the state and its own book sales. At the same time it’s a center for the promotion and stimulation of reading.

We publish 40 books a month and reach out to readers with libro-buses [libraries on wheels].

El Fondo has changed since you took charge.

We inherited [in 2019] a structure with a lot of corruption, incapacity, ineptitude. We had more than 100,000 books — many by young authors — not distributed, sitting in a warehouse. What we said was: “We are going to edit, promote and distribute these books at a low price so that they find their readership.” We changed all the rules of the game.

Some have criticized you for shifting El Fondo’s focus from academic texts to more populist — and less expensive (some El Fondo booklets sell for $1 or less, and relatively few books cost more than $25) — works of fiction, children’s literature and illustrated works.

That’s not true. A very important portion of the books we publish each month has to do with science. … But our priority is making books available to people who often don’t have access to them — because of the price, the distribution network, whatever.

Is helping young writers a priority?

They are a natural source, but it’s not a question of quotas. My brother used to joke: “Until when can someone be considered a young poet? Until age 50.” But we do have a specific collection of young authors from outside the capital [Mexico City]. We want to extend our reach to writers who don’t have access to publishing.

In the digital era, how much of a challenge is it to promote books, especially among the young?

Obviously this is a time with very strong pressures toward distraction, the mobile phone. We [publishers] are no longer the bosses of the game. We have to battle. We now have six programs on TV each week speaking about books, and seven on radio. We make TikToks and whatever else we have to do to convince adolescents that reading is fun.

El Fondo has a distribution hub for its collection in San Diego, and also a mobile “book truck” visiting schools, libraries, etc., in that area. Might El Fondo expand its reach among Spanish speakers in the United States?

I have to go to Los Angeles to see what the possibilities are to make a good bookstore and a cultural center. We can’t do it alone. We would have to associate ourselves with independent Hispanic booksellers.

There’s a perception that the current age of Latin American literature pales in comparison with the “boom” years of the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, etc. What’s your take?

You really can’t compare. Give it time. Maybe now is not as brilliant as the boom, but you need distance to judge. I was very, very fortunate: I read Latin American literature like crazy in my youth. … And of course there have been some advances, some expanses of genres, since then. … In the 1980s Latin American authors took on the dimension of la novela negra [the “noir,” or dark, novel], police mysteries that mixed the criminal with the social milieu. I am part of that movement.

Belascoarán Shayne stands somewhere on the gumshoe spectrum between Sam Spade and Columbo — but is very much a chilango, or Mexico City native. He clings to a sense of decency amid an atmosphere of moral decay, sometimes verging on the surreal. His loyal Dr. Watson is a plumber. The detective’s singular pedigree: He’s the son of an Irish folk singer mom and a Basque sea captain dad.

But he’s absolutely Mexican.

As a child, you emigrated to Mexico with your family from Spain. That was after the Spanish Civil War. Did that epochal conflict resonate in your home?

My grandparents participated in the war. One died and one was put in jail.

They were Republicans against Francisco Franco?

Republicans of course! I would die of shame if not.

You are an outspoken supporter of ex-president López Obrador and President Sheinbaum, and their proclaimed “transformation” of Mexican society. What about critics who say Mexico is on a path to a one-party, authoritarian state?

Authoritarian, really? Did they forget something? The time in Mexico when there was a congress with 315 [ruling-party] deputies and one independent? That wasn’t that long ago. And a time when the president was elected via fraud? A country that resolved its conflicts through violent repression? That was authoritarian.

Is political polarization on the rise?

Is this a polarized country? Yes? Is it more polarized than it used to be? No. When they fired against los campesinos in Aguas Blancas [a 1995 police massacre of 17 peasants in western Guerrero state], was this country less polarized than now? No. It was polarized in a different way.

Are you bothered by the international pushback against leftist political rule in Mexico?

Conservative thought in the United States and Spain doesn’t like what we are doing in Mexico. I get it. We represent the left and we don’t hide in a cave. We favor social programs over capital. Andrés Manuel [López Obrador] said it very clearly: “We have no problem with big capital in Mexico — but with fair salaries, full liberty and no plundering.”

How do you see Mexico’s future?

Complicated. And hopeful.

Fans await new tales of Belascoarán navigating the capital’s brooding depths. Have the world-weary shamus and the former Aztec capital lost their noir juju?

I’ve lost it, because I’ve become old. I no longer write novels with the same angle. At nights now I’m writing a mystery novel — but not with Belascoarán but with Olguita, my favorite character. She is a journalist, 22.

You ever get tired? Time to sit back and savor the smokes and Coca-Cola?

El Fondo demands tremendous energy — but it’s an interesting energy. We are providing something to people that they didn’t have: access to the world of books.

Do you ever contemplate the Reaper?

No. That’s a waste of time. You get enough time on this earth, and when it’s over, it’s over. When you’re an author who writes noir novels and you direct a publishing house, you face two possibilities: Be optimistic, or kill yourself.

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern, vicious film noir. A lesbian woman named Lou is estranged from her vicious father Lou Sr. yet manages a decrepit gym he owns in their desert town. Jackie, a female drifter, arrives in town and engages in back-seat, adulterous sex with JJ, who’s married to Lou’s sister, Beth. Lou is instantly attracted to her when she flexes her muscles. The two women soon begin a tawdry sexual relationship.Beth winds up in a hospital when JJ viciously beats her offscreen. Jackie has been abusing steroids to build muscle. She flies into a murderous rage and brutally kills JJ. A string of double-crosses explodes. Can Lou bring down her father and his illicit crime machine? Is Jackie a serious love interest or a con artist?

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern-day, highly immoral, sleazy take on the film noir genre. It features a graphic lesbian relationship, numerous scenes of graphic violence, substance abuse, and abundant foul language. The movie has a twist-filled script, fast pacing and gritty performances, but it repulsed the vast majority of moviegoers at the box office.

(PaPaPa, HoHoHo, LLL, VVV, SSS, NN, AA, DD, MMM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Vicious, promiscuous, totally immoral movie filled with violence and sex, especially lesbian sex;

Foul Language:

At least 78 obscenities (including 65 “f” words), three strong profanities using Jesus Christ and a gross scene where a woman has to unclog a clogged toilet;

Violence:

Numerous people are shot in graphically bloody fashion with sickening wounds and shocking sound effects, woman shoots another woman in the head and causes blood to splatter all over the camera, woman beats a man to death, woman breaks that man’s jawbone wide open as she slams his head repeatedly into a table, abused wife is hospitalized by a particularly brutal yet offscreen beating that leaves her face severely bruised and swollen, another character tortures this woman by pressing hard against her facial injuries, woman shoots another man in a shootout then shoves the barrel of her gun into his mouth, takes the gun back out but smashes the gun into his face to kill him, and a woman is shown waking up from a seemingly fatal gunshot wound, but another woman chokes her to death and dumps her body in the desert;

Sex:

Graphic lesbian sex scenes, particularly showing oral sex, the sex is shown promiscuously on a one-night stand, and later another lesbian blackmails one of the lead lesbians into having relations with her (though this is only implied and discussed, not shown), movie opens with a man having forceful, adulterous sex with a woman from behind in the back of a car, and a lesbian sucks on her girlfriend’s toe;

Nudity:

Several lesbian sex scenes feature female breasts and buttocks but no genitals, another lesbian woman is shown standing with full rear nudity after an implied sex scene, and shirtless men are seen working out in several scenes;

Alcohol Use:

Adults frequently drink alcohol, with one scene showing a woman drunk;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A woman smokes cigarettes frequently, a female bodybuilder severely abuses steroids throughout, leading to violent outbursts and her vomiting onstage in front of a crowd, and the steroid injections are shown in a sensuous fashion;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Lying, double-crosses, deception rampant throughout, with a dehumanizing use of violence.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern-day, highly immoral, sleazy take on the film noir genre that centers on a graphic lesbian relationship, numerous scenes of graphic violence and an abundance of foul language. LOVE LIES BLEEDING has a twist-filled script, fast pacing and gritty performances, but should not be viewed by anyone.

The story centers upon a lesbian woman named Lou (Kristen Stewart), who is estranged from her vicious father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) yet works managing a decrepit gym he owns in their desert town. Meanwhile, a female drifter named Jackie (Katy O’Brien) arrives in town and immediately engages in back-seat, adulterous sex with JJ (Dave Franco), who’s married to Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone).

The backseat liaison results in a job for Jackie at a gun range on the edge of town owned by Lou Jr. She’s just saving up money to finish a trip to Las Vegas for a women’s bodybuilding championship, and when she flexes her massive muscles, Lou is instantly attracted to her.

The two soon engage in a tawdry sexual relationship, but Lou’s happiness is abruptly halted when Beth winds up in a hospital after a vicious (offscreen) beating at the hands of JJ. Lou Sr. wants to keep it all in the family rather than report JJ to the police, which angers Lou greatly.

Jackie has been abusing steroids in order to build muscle for her upcoming competition, and flies into a murderous rage that results in her brutally killing JJ. When Lou and Jackie dump his body in an enormous pit in the desert outside of town, a string of double-crosses explodes as Lou Sr. is determined to find out who killed JJ and federal agents start asking Lou lots of questions about his potentially criminal enterprises.

Can Lou manage to bring her father and his illicit crime machine down? Is Jackie a serious love interest or a con artist using her for her own ends?

LOVE LIES BLEEDING has excellent performances from all of its cast, who bring a wide array of seedy characters to vivid life. Also, Director/Co-writer Rose Glass keeps the twists coming fast and furious throughout the movie’s bonkers second half.

Despite the technical skill with which it’s made, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a movie that has literally no characters to support and no sense of legal justice – just brutal vigilante revenge meted out several times over. Even Lou becomes utterly reprehensible and heartless by the end, and the movie’s entire mood is demoralizing and dehumanizing.

Packed with graphic violence, sex and nudity and an abundance of foul language, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is utterly distasteful and a must to avoid for viewers of all ages.