Movie Spotlight: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aitch Alberto read the novel in 2014, in one sitting. She was a friend's recommendation. Alberto didn't put it down. Something unlocked. She wrote the screenplay on spec, reached out to the author, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, in 2016, and said she'd done something and wanted to come visit. It took seven years from that moment to a world premiere at TIFF. The script was written across her own transition. She has said that owning her authenticity made her capable of directing it.

This is her first feature.

1987 El Paso

Two Mexican-American teenagers who have nothing obvious in common find each other at a public pool. Aristotle Mendoza is guarded and closed off. His brother is in prison. Nobody in the family talks about it. Dante Quintana is the opposite, open about everything, curious about everything, a kid who has opinions about the universe. The story is set across a summer and then more summers, El Paso heat and wide Texas sky and the particular silence of families with things they won't say out loud.

Max Pelayo plays Aristotle. Reese Gonzales plays Dante. Neither had done a feature before this. Alberto said she knew almost immediately that they were right, that the connection between them was real and didn't need to be manufactured.

The People Around Them

Eugenio Derbez plays Dante's father. He also produced. Eva Longoria plays Aristotle's mother, Soledad. Both are working against their comedic images and both are good. The domestic scenes have weight. The parents are not obstacles in the story, they're full people with histories of their own, which is not always how coming-of-age films handle adults.

Lin-Manuel Miranda produced as well. The film got made because people with resources believed in it.

What Alberto Said About Making It

In an interview with the Oscars newsletter after the film was shortlisted for international feature, Alberto talked about shooting in El Paso specifically. "I wanted to create a world where Latinx families were centered and shown with complexity and dignity, and El Paso was the only place to do that," she said. "The heat, the border, the specific culture there, all of it informed the texture of the film."

The Hollywood Reporter called it "a compassionate debut." Los Angeles Times said it is "distinguished by its atmosphere of compassion in which expression thrives." 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. 95% audience score.

The Seven Years

Writing a script on spec with no guarantee anyone will make it, for seven years, across a period of major personal change, is a specific kind of commitment to a story. The novel mattered enough to Alberto that she spent a significant part of her twenties on it without a deal in place.

That kind of attachment tends to show up on screen. "Every aspect of the film resonates with genuine affection," wrote MovieWeb. Tribune News Service called the performances "specific" in the way that good writing produces specific things, details that feel chosen rather than generic.

It's a film about two boys in 1987 Texas figuring out who they are, made by a filmmaker who was doing the same thing while she wrote it.

Drama

---

Streaming now on Relay.