Mexican Bus Ride

Oliviero, a young peasant, is forced to leave his bride on their wedding night in order to get his dying mother to regularize her will. Of course, the village is very far away—and then the bus driver insists on taking a detour by way of his own mother’s home—so there is plenty of time for Oliviero’s life to be transformed. By what? By “nothing . . . nothing happens, nothing at all” (Buñuel). But it is his very delight in mundane absurdity that makes Mexican Bus Ride vintage Luis Buñuel, and for our purposes, vintage Mexican Buñuel. Ado Kyrou wrote: “[This is] a relaxed comedy with a hint of something more meaningful just beneath the surface. . . . The trip begins . . . with an absurd birth and ends with a ridiculous death. Meanwhile, the young man has learned what love is, has flirted with politics, has deflated a few balloons: business, the family, folklore, and so on.”