Seven-year-old Sol (Naíma Sentíes) is preparing to celebrate her father Tona (Mateo Garcia)’s birthday along with her mother, aunts and other relatives at her grandfather’s house. Casting a pall over the entire event is the fact that Tona is terminally ill and does not have much longer to live. Amid the stresses and the hustle and bustle of party preparations, each family member deals with the impending tragedy in their own way, and Sol must come to terms with the loss of her father in the best way she knows to, observing those around her and how they are coping while learning to process grief in her own personal way.

Grief affects different people in different ways. Tótem, through the eyes of Sol, shows us a kaleidoscope of coping mechanisms. Some turn inward. Others lash out. Sol just wants to understand. Sentíes delivers a precious and captivating performance that feels very real without feeling saccharin. Confronted with such a situation, the average child wouldn’t just break down into tears all the time lamenting their loss. They’re kids. Kids are still figuring out their emotional resonance scale and may not always behave in ways you would expect them to. Each person has to pave their own path to acceptance including children. Director Lila Avilés delivers a quietly assured film as delicate as it is potent. She utilizes almost exclusively very tight framing to put an emphasis on the faces of the family, every small expression and gesture to be captured and interpreted. Frankly when I read the plot synopsis for this film, I was thinking, “Oh boy… Here comes another depressing arthouse slog about someone slowly dying…” While Tótem certainly isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it isn’t a miserable film either. It has touches of exuberant joy, of anger and frustration, of stress and nervousness… Yes, it is also sad at times. But life is sad sometimes. You can’t bury it and hope it goes away. Just let it be part of you. It is regardless of whether you are honest with yourself or not.

Janus Contemporaries, Janus Films’ new sub-label for first-run arthouse films fresh from the theater to complement the Criterion Collection, brings for its first foray into physical media a fresh and clear digital HD transfer that captures all the pale brown and green hues of the film in lovely detail. The film uses a lot of natural lighting that gives the picture a warm, lived in feel, and the image reflects that mood wonderfully. The 5.1 surround Spanish audio track isn’t going to blow away your friends as a reference quality track, but it does have a delicate sense of immersion that accentuates the quiet dignity of the film, particularly in the sounds of nature as Sol plays outside. For extras, we have primarily a 17-minute interview with director Lila Avilés on the film discussing its themes, the road to making it and what it means to her. It’s a very good discussion with some nice insights into the making of the film. We also have a physical booklet with a nice essay on the film by professor Michael Joshua Rowin of the School of Visual Arts. Honestly, the extras are a bit light, but these are being released at a lower price point than the usual Criterion Collection releases.

Tótem is a touching and deceptively simple film that deals sensitively with a child’s emotional state without veering into abject sentimentality, and Janus Contemporaries has given us a nice technical presentation in which to experience it.