User Reviews

An expressive movie full of force. A journey through the night started as fun by two rich and bored kids. They met face on with the part of the city they've been spared so far. They live there, yet they don't. The kids have long and aristocratic names in their pedigrees; the caifanes barely amount to nicknames: el gato, el azteca, el estilos, and so on. The director, Juan Ibañez makes a movie that strongly reminds us of his theatrical formation. The result is quite interesting. Some scenes are memorable. Take for instance, the one where the whole gang breaks into a funerary and Gato assigns each one a coffin according to the life they've led so far. Of course, pretty Paloma gets one embroiled with silk which matches the soft skin of his hands and the wings of her name as Gato puts it. Once inside they start voicing their feeling about being dead. You hear some beautiful poetry grandly declaimed as if in a theater scenario as well as the street sayings of the have-nots. It ends when a coffin slams shut on one of them and they understand that death has come to play along as they were asking aloud. The finals scenes are remarkable when Estilos the guitar toting guy, is confronted by Jaime, Paloma's boyfriend. He wants to fight the rich kid and he dismisses him by saying: "It's easy for you to fight. You've got nothing to lose, 'cause you've got nothing at all." He thinks he's right because as a member of the upper class, he's been taught that. But in the end, Jaime is the one who loses the one thing he cares most about. Won't tell, but you can imagine.

The first and the best of a small genre, "Los Caifanes" preceded "After Hours", "Something Wild" and other films by a decade. Two middle class people find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of mysterious Downtown nightlife. Sound familiar? This film did it first, and if you know about the turmoil in Mexico City during this time, took full advantage of the statement.

Los Caifanes isn't your typical movie... it's one of those films

that you either love or hate. There's nothing inbetween.Full of

color and some pretty surrealistic settings and characters, Los

Caifanes is probably one of the most representative movies on

Mexico in the 60's, which has earned it a big cult status in the

country, specially among young people. It deals with a lot of

Mexico's social issues in a very special, if not subtle, manner,

and features probably the best performances by Oscar Chavez and

Sergio

This film is outrageous. I believe that by far is one of the best films ever come out of Mexico. It reflects the nature of the Mexican youth as well as the heart of a nation. Juan Ibañez takes the soul of the people and takes it to the mainstream.

This movie, for it's day and age was way ahead of its time. The movie catches a rare decadent lifestyle that hasn't been seen until recent movies. I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who's into Lynch, Kubrik or Tarantino. You will not be disappointed. Now, if I can just find a place where I can buy it, I'll be set!

Maybe the most representative Mexican film at sixties Los Caifanes show us the Odyssey of a group of four humble Mechanical Workers and an aristocratic couple who became in their accomplice in spite of their differences, removed from a prototype of hippies the Caifanes represent a kind of urban gang who used to visit the Mexican Capital on weekends just with the purpose of feel their highest freedom.

With collaboration of Mexican intellectuals Carlos Fuentes and Carlos Monsivais(as a drunk Santa Claus) Los Caifanes Joins not only in the film two opposite worlds but in their casting too, the rich ones Enrique Alvarez Felix and Julissa ,belonged to an Entertainment show business, son and daughter of two divas of the Mexican movies in the forties(Maria Felix and Rita Macedo respectively) and the other side the four Caifanes, Sergio Jimenez,Eduardo Lopes Rojas,Ernesto Gomez Cruz and Oscar Chavez all of them of the unknown university theatrical extraction same as their young director Juan Ibañez who gets of them one of the most convincing performance of a young casting in Mexican films. without being a great success los Caifanes gave a breathe to Mexican films which look new ways in that time full of rock stars singers and for the already weary rancher comedies.

Los Caifanes shows how mexican youth, from different social/economic levels, was looking for that promised modernity during the sixties... Basically, two points of view confront their wills: the medium-up class and the medium-low class... Big difference? In Mexico, yes it was, it is and maybe, it will be...