Review of Mateo (2014) by David C — 06 Oct 2018

With extraordinary subtly and understatement, this film is as poignant as the music it showcases and as complex as the personality into which it delves.

A fly-on-the-wall, ostensibly non-judgmental approach actually delivers almost painfully precise artistic, moral and psychological insights into its subject. The film charts New England-born troubadour Matthew "Mateo" Stoneman's obsessive drive to produce an album of his mariachi compositions. He is candid about time in prison, committed for stealing to fund his recording addiction: it is in goal that he learns his style of music. He scrapes together money playing social clubs and churches in Los Angeles, his domestic life as feral as the stray cats he feeds on his back stoop, to finance recording forays in Havana, Cuba. There he is adopted by a network of bed and breakfast hosts, back-up artists, and recording engineers who look out for his wellbeing, which mostly consists of trying to find him a girlfriend. For, as his wise, matriarchal landlady observes, without companionship he falls prey to "isolation and immaturity." His search for love, almost equally all-consuming as his music making, stands in marked contrast to the focus and discipline of the latter. We see him gauchely taking up with bemused local women or voyeuristically observing prostitutes from a distance, which later echoes in a sad visit to New Hampshire where he spies on his estranged parents from the woods. And yet, for all the pathos and awkwardness of his private life, genuine charisma comes through as soon as the crooning begins. His Cuban comrades comment on it and it reflects in the devotion of audiences in the sold-out Japanese tour that climaxes the movie. Our nebbish, it transpires, really is "Big in Japan.".