The titular protagonist of Fernando Eimbcke's Olmo, the Mexican director's first feature in more than a decade, is a 14-year-old boy in New Mexico in the late 1970s who is trying to navigate the awkward pitfalls of adolescence. In this regard, the film is very ordinary in its day-in-the-life coming-of-age hijinks, playing riffs on all the familiar motifs of early teenage desire, anxiety, joy, and frustration. Where the film steers into more unique territory is how Olmo, who is played with sensitive dexterity and good humor by newcomer Aivan Uttapa, must also help care for his father, Nestor (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), who suffers from multiple sclerosis and is effectively paralyzed from the neck down. Straddling that precarious line between childhood and adulthood, Olmo is thrust into the position of having to care for a parent, which he does sometimes with tenderness, but more often with frustration, resentment, selfishness, and anger.

The film, which was co-written by Vanesa Garnica and Eimbcke (their next collaboration is 2026's Flies), takes place over a single day, focusing on the strain under which Olmo and his family live. His mother, Cecilia (Andrea Suarez Paz), works extra shifts as a waitress to pay the rent on their small house, which is three months overdue. That leaves Nestor's care in the hands of either Olmo or his older sister, Ana (Rosa Armendariz), both of whom have plans for that night—Ana wants to go roller-skating with her friends, while Olmo and his friend Miguel (Diego Olmedo) have plans to attend a party that is being thrown by the cousin of Olmo's neighbor, Nina (Melanie Frometa), a former childhood friend who has developed faster than he has and on whom he has an unrequited crush. The plan is to impress her by supplying a stereo (one of those 1970s silver all-in-one jobs) for the party, thus making themselves essential to the good times. The conflict between selfish desire and unrelenting responsibility touches every member of the family, and they all fail in various ways that are recognizable and imminently human. There are no villains here, just flaws.

As with his previous coming-of-age features, Duck Season (2004), Lake Tahoe (2008), and Club Sandwich (2013), Eimbcke directs with a spare, economical style that packs a lot into every moment, no matter how seemingly inconsequential at first brush. He nails many of Olmo's adolescent pains with serio-comic perfection, especially the scene where Olmo and Miguel stand around awkwardly after they approach Nina from across the street and then try to smoke to look cool (cue the coughing). Similarly, the scene at the party where they bust out their practiced Tony Manero dance moves to the strains of Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band's "A Fifth of Beethoven" turns what should have been a disaster into a moment of disco-lighted triumph.

But, at other times Eimbcke pushes a little too hard, sometimes for comic effect and sometimes to force fantasy into reality. In the first instance we have the scene in which Olmo and Miguel accidentally stumble into a wake instead of the party; Olmo sees the corpse in the coffin and imagines that it is his father speaking to him, which makes sense, but are we really to believe that he gets so caught up in that moment in his head that he actually leans into the coffin and hugs the body? In the second instance, we have the scene after his triumphant dance moves in which Nina takes him back to an empty bedroom and essentially turns the film's opening masturbatory fantasy into potential reality. But, again, are we supposed to believe that, based on a few dance moves, Nina is suddenly so taken with skinny, awkward Olmo that she is removing her clothing? A near kiss would have sufficed, but Eimbcke feels the need to push it farther, and that is where the film is at its highest risk of snapping.

Alas, it never does, and the deft manner in which Eimbcke manages most of the film's humor and pathos holds it together. For such a short film (it runs barely over 80 minutes), there is lot of drama and conflict, but always with an eye toward some kind of resolution, even if temporary and brittle. Olmo has a genuine warmth and sense of humanity that carries it over some of the rougher moments, and even when the characters are being mean or selfish or myopic, we still understand why and empathize with their struggles. And there has to be some kind of prize given to any film that uses the passage of a bowel obstruction to create a moment of poignant joy.

Copyright © 2026 James Kendrick

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