LONDON: In the mountains of Monterrey, Mexico, 17-year-old Ulises heads a small street gang. He and his fellow Terkos roam the streets, sparring with other groups, dodging the clutches of an escalating drug war and scratching a living where they can. But above it all, Los Terkos love traditional cumbia music — they refer to themselves as Kolombianos, listen to lovingly slowed-down recordings, dress in flamboyant and baggy clothes and dance with an uninhibited freedom that is captivating to watch.
In “I’m No Longer Here,” directed by Fernando Frías de la Parra (whose past credits include HBO’s “Los Espookys”) and starring a cast of unknown actors, this vibrant and passionate world is painted as a heady mix of beauty and danger. The film lingers on scenes of the group dancing, with the revelry taking on an almost hypnotic air. But at the same time, viewers get snippets of gang rivalries, armed roadblocks, and an escalating tension that explodes into Ulises’ life in a scene that is so surprisingly shocking that the silence afterwards is deafening.
This pivotal moment causes Ulises to flee Mexico and head to New York, where he scrapes a living as an undocumented immigrant and struggles to find any kind of happiness with his friends and culture stripped away. Frías de la Parra juxtaposes the two locations through flashbacks, laying bare Ulises’ struggles as he goes from a world where he knows everything and everyone, to one where he has nobody to turn to.
There are glimpses of light. Ulises strikes up a friendship with Lin, a 16-year-old Chinese New Yorker who wants nothing more than to understand him and make him feel welcome. And when Ulises gets the chance to dance, the sense of relief he feels is palpable — despite the fact that New York is less receptive to cumbia street performance than he had hoped.
“I’m No Longer Here” is most effective in its calmer moments. The story arc gives the film a beginning, middle and end, for sure, but it actually works best as an observational movie. The story is the hook, and the backdrop for everything Ulises does, but it’s when he stops and just dances, or when Los Terkos let their guards down and celebrate, that this movie is at its most engaging.
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