The Mourning Of - 2025

A young woman who has recently suffered the loss of her mother starts attending other people’s funerals as a way of coping with, or avoiding, her grief.

Maribel (Villegas) is off to a funeral – another one. She already has the service notes from her own mother’s funeral pinned to the underside of her car’s sun visor, as well as a bunch of other service notes casually strewn across the back seat, but still she’s circling the obituaries in the newspaper like they were classified ads and underlining the details of the dead person’s life which may be useful to her when talking to the grieving family.

Since her mother died five months ago, Maribel has been regularly attending the funerals of strangers, and today is no different. At the Church of the Ascension another Latino family is in mourning, with another matriarch taken too soon from those who loved her dearly. Father Tomas (Cedillo) is residing over the proceedings as usual, praising the good graces of the deceased and relaying pleasantries which are designed to soften the grief, but underneath he knows that he’s just trotting out the same old platitudes time after time. The fact that he keeps seeing Maribel in the congregation, at funeral after funeral, is something that’s started to get to him, not least for the fact that somebody is getting to see through the veil of ritualism into the banality of routine beneath.

As it becomes more and more obvious what Maribel is up to, and that her transgressions are becoming increasingly brazen – attending wakes, entering into others’ houses, gate-crashing the funerals of those who know she shouldn’t be there – it is up to Father Tomas to confront her and see if he can help her move on. Unfortunately, he’s already rather frustrated and is receiving pressure from above to sort the situation out, so his advice is not all that understanding and is designed more to fix his own situation than it is to help Maribel.

Throughout the fifteen-minute runtime of The Mourning Of, we follow Maribel through these grief-ridden escapades, watching her go through her own ritual and her own routine as she prepares for yet another funeral. She always looks the same, dressed as she was for her own mother’s funeral, in the same coat and even the same earrings, as she keeps the memory of her mother alive in her mind. We get up close and personal with the cinematography, and writer/director Merced Elizondo ensures that we capture the feelings, or lack thereof, on Maribel’s face at all times, while DoP Matheus Bastos busies himself with capturing the dark, oppressive atmospheres which linger in the church and the homes of the dead.

The central performance from Natalia Villegas is very strong, and without the need for much dialogue she manages to convey the inner turmoil that Maribel feels whenever she is attending another event for the newly deceased. We see that even though she longs to comfort and relate to the suffering family she is stuck in her own pattern of grief which she cannot escape. It is written all over her face how much she longs for release but ultimately we see how much of her that has become dead inside. Julio César Cedillo, too, is strong as Father Tomas, however, his performance suffers from the poor characterisation that he must portray, as the priest chastises Maribel rather than comforts her and continually swears and takes the Lord’s name in vain.

The Mourning Of is a very well-handled production, with everything looking and sounding great as it plays on the screen. The musical score, from René G. Boscio, uses thrumming classical violins and chiming chords on the church organ to really add to the atmosphere of the production, keeping everything in place and lending a resounding religiosity to the experience, while Elizondo places his shots with care and slots artistic visuals in where he can.

Sadly, there’s not a lot of explanation for why Maribel has decided on the course of action she has taken, and without really understanding of psychology of her situation the resolution might seem to some to come from nowhere. The premise is fairly basic throughout, but nevertheless we spend too much time lingering on shots, on faces, on incidentals, on the getting there, rather than on any actual drama or driven narrative in the film. While The Mourning Of looks and sounds great, and is well put together, it ultimately lacks the drive of a full narrative, or the integrity of a fully rounded characterisation, meaning that it suffers somewhat in the impact it has on the audience.