‘Totem’ Captures a Day in the Life of a Large Latin Family
Director Lila Avilés, who also wrote the screenplay, has crafted something special here: a meditation on family and mortality that spares no emotional quarter, but remains an uplifting experience all the same.

The press notes accompanying “Tótem,” the new film from Mexican director Lila Avilés, describe it as a “choral film.” As a literary turn of phrase, it’s better suited for Ms. Avilés’s movie than, say, “ensemble piece.” The latter presupposes a group of individual actors who inhabit a story with equal emphasis; “choral” suggests something blended and organic, a whole in which parts aren’t summed up so much as made inviolable.
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