Mexican director Michel Franco’s humans are tormented and distressed. While showing them, he turns off all filters. That’s the feeling I got from the few I watched. New Order is full of political chaos that assumingly emerges from the social disparity among Mexicans. Elites, corrupted politicians and government officials, and the working class who serve them are in the focus this time. The term whitexicans is more apt. Franco has brilliantly picked a royal wedding scene to gather all of his subjects in one spot. I felt he is a bit over-ambitious in New Order as the reasoning of the political unrest is not so clearly transferred to the audience. But the pinpointed shots capture its brutality around. A dreadful mix of graphics and real.

Marianne (Naian González Norvind) leads the plot. It was her wedding. A happy, rich girl suddenly gets exposed to all the violence in the world. When her wedding party was disrupted by the green-splashed rebels, her mother hides the scare seeing green water run out of the pipe. Maybe Franco created a scene to show how riches treat their loyal employees in their critical needs. The men in the family ignore Rolando (Eligio Meléndez), a former employee, requests a big amount for his wife’s operation. Marianne is the only vulnerable soul here. She ventures out with another reliable employee in their posh house to help Ronaldo. Soon, she is trapped by the military and taken to jail. Now she knows what’s exactly happening in the country she lives and with the ruthless shots of mass murder and physical and sexual assaults in the jail, Franco makes his visual statement. It’s not one-sided. Greedy troublemakers fight in the background for fixing ransom from the wealthy. It’s uncertain who is right and who is wrong. The entire system is being questioned. The established unrest in New Order is nobody has a clear view of the current socio-political situation in the country. The last scene magnifies it.

New Order is good-hearted in its solemn desire for a Change. Yet, I wouldn’t rate it as Michel Franco’s political best