“I Carry You With Me” opens with an older man, Iván, walking towards the subway in New York. We are somewhere in the first decade of the 21st century, and we listen to his overhead narration providing bits of information that will make more sense as the film continues. The opening images establish Iván’s solitude amidst the bustle around him as the present bleeds into the past and we are transported to Mexico in the mid-nineties. The narrative will return to New York, and the juxtapositioning of these two duelling narratives – divided by time and space – gives “I Carry You With Me” much of its catharsis. But, director Heidi Ewing’s preoccupation with time goes beyond this. As flashbacks bleed into earlier flashbacks, and time-jumps of days, weeks and years dreamily dissolve into each other, the director reveals an interest in time as both a formal concern as well as a thematic preoccupation.
The fascination with time feels apt for a film about forging a life for one’s self. Before “I Carry You With Me” establishes its romantic centre, it announces itself as a story of a man. Iván. After the brief opening, the young Iván we meet in Mexico is an aspiring chef with culinary school training, making his living in a thankless job washing dishes and fixing toilets. In an early scene, he presses his boss about a promised promotion to kitchen staff and he’s gently rebuked. He must be patient, and wait, if he wants to find success in the kitchen. His personal life hinges on that same sense of inertia. He is the father of a young boy, from a previous relationship, hiding his attraction to men which presents a challenge in his community. And it’s that dichotomy between waiting for something and making a choice that Ewing traces in the film. Iván’s life has few pleasures. He enjoys fleeting moments with his son from a previous relationship. But his life seems empty beyond that.
That question of choice is emphasised when Iván and his friend sneak out to a secret club where he meets openly gay Gerardo and strikes up a romance. The what and how of their burgeoning romance is achingly familiar. We see Iván wrestling with his own internalised homophobia. We sympathise as he tries to grapple with his desire to care for his son with his desire for Gerardo. In shadowy flashbacks, we see scenes of both men as children, and the ways each was affected by their father’s reaction to their sexuality. It’s a familiar narrative of queer lives getting by in societies that problematise their queerness. When Iván decides that Mexico has little to offer him professionally and personally, deciding to cross the border to the US illegally, another familiar arc develops – the beguiling dream of America as a place of freedom persists. And, so the queer story mutates into immigrant story as the film’s screenplay (Ewing co-writes with Alan Page Arriaga) recognises the sharp connection between two othered cultural groups.
As central as the romance is, “I Carry You With Me” often doubles as a character study of Iván’s life. As Iván prepares for an arduous trip across the border, with his friend Sandra, Ewing digs into the psyche of a man committed to find something better at all costs. Armando Espitia distils the conflicting and complicated emotional struggles of Iván. He’s especially good in the back half of the film as Iván struggles to adapt to New York, recognising the lie of the American Dream for the stark reality that it is. Ewing’s awareness of how Iván’s immigrant and queer identity intersects makes for thoughtful moments, although as the film goes on it becomes more firmly rooted in the former than the latter.
It’s essential, then, that Christian Vázquez, playing the less central Gerardo, be so effective in his role. He’s given less to do, but his performance feels like the most indelible turn on the film. Vasquez looks like a movie star. He sells Gerardo’s fascination and consternation with Ivan’s reticence. There’s a final act decision that precipitates one of their final moments together in the 90s flashback sequence that feels too hastily set up narratively but manages to work just because of the sheer commitment of Vázquez’s expressive face. As moving as Espitia makes Iván’s personal struggles, “I Carry You With Me” is at its best when Espitia and Vázquez share the screen, turning moments of mundane conversations and embraces, into something that feels momentous.
In a move of great formal ambition, the fictive narrative feature of “I Carry You With Me” becomes a documentary in the last act as we return to the aughts, where we realise that the narrative story of the earlier parts is a depiction of two real men. Ewing’s career, thus far, has been as a documentarian and in the final act “I Carry You With Me” becomes a potent and explicit rallying cry for the struggles of immigrants in America that feels all too timely and familiar.
It is the unceasing familiarity of this story that makes “I Carry You With Me” feel so stirring. There are so many nuances that distinguish the film’s focus. Queer stories in the media are still often filtered through a white lens, and the film’s intersection of queer identity with the immigrant identity in an American society that rejects the latter is profound. The film’s last third, which shifts from a tale of young men to older men is also significant as it presents an image of queerness that is more than the sensual. The fact that Ewing does not rest on these valuable thematic fronts, but imbues “I Carry You With Me” with specific notes of aesthetic and formal grace is what makes the film so exciting as it goes on. Even when its own formal ambitions sometimes become more structurally than emotionally compelling, “I Carry You With Me” is consistently stirring. It gives a warm, and genuine embrace to these characters and then expands that embrace to the audience.
I Carry You With Me is playing as part of the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival and will have its official release in January 2021.
