Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
The Ochoas
Intro:
… a small fly on the wall documentary look at a routine but disturbing form of privatisation.
Ambulances are a familiar sight in modern cities. A poet once described them as being ‘closed like confessionals’, as they thread loud noons of cities, and it is true that inside them something private and profound may be happening. When we hear the sirens wail, our own sense of unease is always potentially triggered. In Luke Lorentzen ‘s odd little documentary, he goes inside the private ambulance, run by the Ochoas family.
The setting is Mexico City, and partly owing to the governments’ austerity measures and the general brutality of the modern economy, the public ambulances are few and far between. Thus, lots of Uber-style private providers have sprung up and we see how this works for the Ochoa family.
Dad is trying to make ends meet and he goes out nightly in search of business with his two sons. The eldest does a lot of the driving and helps dad with the necessary paperwork. The younger one is about twelve and should really be at school, but he is dragged along anyway. Mostly, he seems to be interested in his video game and any cheap take away food that he can bludge.
We suppose that part of Lorentzen’s point is that the Ochoas are nearly as desperate as the urban poor that they pick up. Their ambulance looks clean and well-appointed but we also see that sometimes they have to push it into the gas station as they have run out of fuel.
The patients too, are all a bit desperate. Most of the time the first question when they are stowed into the ambo is about how much this is going to cost them. Often, it is a choice between the far off public hospital or the nearer but prohibitively expensive private one. Sometimes the Ochoas get tip offs about crashes from the cops but this too, comes at the cost of an expected backhander which further depletes the family’s profits.
The doco has been loosely compared to fiction films like Nightcrawler and Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead. However, it isn’t really like that at all. It is a small fly on the wall documentary look at a routine but disturbing form of privatisation. Except for a couple of perfunctory scenes back in the slightly chaotic Ochoa household, we never really get to see their lives in the round. But nor does the film focus pruriently on the spectacular blood and guts elements of such work. Mostly, it is low key to the point of being a bit dull. Still, in its way it offers a glimpse into the routinisation of a health service function that we take for granted in a rich country, and which we hope to never need.
