I write scripts in Mexico City, two of which have been made, neither the way I wrote them. I read films for structure first. I cannot help it. If a scene does one job I get restless, and if it does three I go back and watch it again.
Structurally this is a two hander wearing a family drama as a coat. Count the scenes. The mother and the daughter are alone together nine times, and each one is shorter than the last. That is the design. By the eighth you are doing the arithmetic yourself and dreading the ninth. I would give a year of my life to have written the phone call at minute sixty two.
A pilot has two jobs, introduce a world and make you need episode two, and this does both without a single scene of people explaining the world to each other. The funeral tea is a lesson in blocking. Nine speaking parts in one room and I could draw you the map of it afterwards. I want the rest of this.
Ten minutes, one room, three people asleep and one awake. The whole film is the awake one deciding whether to wake anybody. On the page this is a page and a half. On screen it is ten minutes and not one of them drags, which is the trick I have never once managed to learn.
