In 2019 Ariel Martínez Herrera created a film about a pandemic, in which people wore masks, some denied the pandemic entirely, cops are bastards, people hoarded and looted, and you could have the disease and infect others without knowing it. If Toxico was made today, it would be too on the nose. Instead it’s eerily prescient.

During a pandemic that causes insomnia and eventual insanity and death (whether from the disease or from mere insomnia is unclear), Laura (Jazmín Stuart) and Augusto (Agustín Rittano) travel by mobile home through Argentine backroads to escape society and lie low in a remote cabin for a while.

This is essentially a two-person film, two beleaguered survivors brilliantly acted by Rittano and Stuart. The bleak worldview of the outside is balanced by the quirky lovingness of the inside of the mobile home. When police stop them and demand to search the place for drugs — drugs that can be used for suicide are very strictly controlled —  we feel the betrayal of the intrusion.

Interspersed between scenes of the mains tory are snippets of how others are faring during the pandemic. Infrastructure is starting to break down. Cell phones aren’t working, there’s no money in ATMs and cards are useless. A sleepy-looking man wanders the streets in the middle of a riot clutching a pillow and gets knocked out by a flying brick. A man in a tuxedo stands in a wheat field counting his bullets. A doctor in a yellow plastic PPE suit shreds on an electric guitar found in a victim’s house, then is instructed to return to the task at hand: disposing of bodies. Throughout, a recurring graffito is seen: a wide-open eye with an X drawn through it. End wakefulness.

“Do you want us to wear masks?” asks Augusto.

“I wouldn’t mind getting the disease from you,” replies Laura.

“Well I would. I would mind if I infected you.”

I have heard this same conversation in both the Covid-19 and the AIDS pandemics. This is very real and very human, despite the surreality of the crumbling society outside the mobile home.

The cinematography of Toxico is muted and calm, the focus is not on the end of the world as much as it is on the relationship of these two people, normal people, a bit drab, bonding and bickering, fleeing and falling in love all over again.

“Did you have to wait for the end of the world to learn how to drive? ¡Caramba!”

It’s in Spanish with subtitles, though large portions of the story happen wordlessly. Toxico is an excellent film that may, unfortunately, suffer a bit because its subject matter is too current. But ultimately I think it will be remembered as the quality film it is.

9 out of 10 Pillows