Mexican Bus Ride (Luis Bunuel, 1952)

Luis Bunuel was already in his early fifties when he made Mexican Bus Ride, and one can imagine an alternative history in which it would have been a sign of winding down, of easing into dawdling conviviality of the sort that characterizes the titular journey: the bus only gets going when it’s full, adhering to no fixed schedule – progress gets interrupted along the way by a flat tire, by being stuck in mud, by a woman giving birth, by driver fatigue, and finally by a detour to a birthday celebration. A bit of frustration gets expressed at all this, but for the most part the passengers take it in stride, the journey being as important as the destination, and efficiency being a rather suspect commodity (during the mudbound episode, a pair of oxen acquit themselves much more effectively than a modern tractor). The passenger at the centre of our attention is Oliverio, heading to find and bring back a lawyer to document his dying mother’s will, knowing that otherwise his scheming older brothers will manipulate her for their own self-interests – the urgency of the situation pulls him away from his wedding night, and exposes him to the relentless advances of a female passenger (to whom he seems to represent a pure sexual itch that she’s determined to scratch). A few sharp Bunuelian strokes dispel any potential sense of complacency: a vividly imagined dream sequence drawing on Oliverio’s faltering resistance to temptation; a willing no-strings-attached consummation in the midst of a storm; and a final few scenes in which he arrives back too late, but forges his mother’s mark on some documents for the sake of implementing her expressed wishes, before drawing his wife close and uttering a fiery statement of intent. The movie’s positioning of adultery as a galvanizing force and of manipulation of the dead as a morally righteous act still feels defiantly transgressive, a sign of a filmmaker with a startling journey still ahead.