Contemporary cinema has been overtaken by analog textures for quite some time. Combined with the wide variety of formats they appropriate — Super 8, 35mm, or pre-digital video cameras, to name a few — countless films either attempt to capture their aura by actually using them or mimic it through digital tools, resulting in an ever-increasing indexical uncanniness for the viewer. Analog texture often infests the cinematic space by drawing attention to its own materiality (or, in many instances, its simulated materiality), leaving little or no room for other visual or narrative devices and, aside from a modest number of exceptions, paradoxically reducing its own presence to the status of a mere gimmick.
Racornelia’s debut feature MACDO is a welcome addition to those exceptions where the aural and visual compositions generated by the video camera go beyond self-referentiality and extend into the narrative domain, becoming, in this film’s case, a haunting presence within. Inspired to a certain extent by the filmmaker’s own childhood experiences and family, the film takes place in 1997, during a Christmas dinner shared by two middle-class families — comprised of two brothers, Alejandro and Octavio, their wives, Estelle and Lisbette, and their respective children, Alicia and Lalo. Alejandro and Estelle are hosting the evening, and from the very first scene — even before the guests arrive — the pressure to appear as a perfect family hangs heavy in the air. Alejandro urges Estelle to tidy up a teary-eyed Alicia, to make her presentable; the doorbell rings, and the family histrionics are already set in motion.
Throughout the first hour of MACDO, we witness what can be described as a chamber piece drama, unfolding within the relatively predictable framework of a Christmas dinner. Yet even stripped to its narrative bare bones, Racornelia shapes a carefully balanced atmosphere, filled with dramatic tension, humor, and an overarching critique of the patriarchal, heterosexual, and Catholic family model — all while sustaining the illusion of authenticity on which these video-camera images depend. On the surface, we witness a deeply rooted, passive-aggressive sibling rivalry unfolding across various fronts — financial status, manners, child-rearing, and interactions with their wives — mirrored in the antagonism between Lisbette and Estelle, who reproduce the hetero-patriarchal roles assigned to them without fully grasping the oppression they’re subjected to. The autobiographical dimension reinforces this effect: while the inclusion of the filmmaker’s childhood photos suggests she sees herself in Alicia, her portrayal of Estelle complicates the picture, creating a fractured subjectivity in which each character — even Lisbette, who, unlike Estelle, displays a more flirtatious and impudent attitude — embodies a distinct facet of the female experience.
During its first half, MACDO establishes an intriguing fictional pact with the viewer — concealing the narrative mimesis of the home video imagery through the actors’ naturalistic performances, and alternatively exposing it through a range of formal strategies. Among the most striking are the arbitrary visual abstractions created by the optical zoom, and the embodied yet anonymous camera that observes and follows the characters — when it’s not passing through their own hands. There are indeed traces of mockumentary-style camerawork from which this quizzical gaze may originate, but the overall effect evokes something closer to the unease and eeriness associated with the well-established tradition of found footage horror. Who, then, does this gaze belong to? Part clinical, part curious, and part inattentive — yet always haunting — the film seems progressively less concerned with making sense of or through this gaze, and more invested in moving away from it in the second half.
Focusing on the aftermath of the guests’ abrupt departure — triggered by a heated argument sparked by Lisbette’s claims about Alicia’s behavior — the second half is where fiction begins to unravel, its boundaries growing increasingly blurred, just as the perfect family mask constructed by Alejandro and Estelle shatters into pieces. The spatial shift from the living room to the bedroom further underlines the tonal change, with the latter functioning as the off-scene (or rather, the obscene). The disturbing confrontation between the couple, marked by a violent, oppressive, and unhinged deployment of power dynamics, soon overwhelms the already dramatically dense narrative economy of MACDO. There’s little doubt that the filmmaker sees this startling digression as a key element of the film, yet the formal strategies she employs — split screen, intertitles, audio loops, the addition of a metafilmic level — only make the film feel more overloaded. While the first hour operates within a framework of emotional and formal excess, the second half unfortunately veers into voluntary self-indulgence, stretching in length and weighed down by rage, chaos, and affect. Ultimately, the film seems to short-circuit itself, becoming less a work destined for an audience than a cathartic personal experiment — unless the goal is, in fact, to crush the viewer under its weight.
Published as part of FIDMarseille 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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