Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

Because of American audiences’ aversions to making foreign language films blockbusters, it’s not often I get a chance to talk about prominent actors who predominantly work in a language other than English. Thus, I’m taking this opportunity to discuss Gael Garcia Bernal, a Mexican actor who got his start in Spanish-language cinema under the tutelage of the likes of Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, and Pedro Almodóvar. That impressive array of directors provides plenty of opportunities for the actor to shine in his native language and provided a fine spring board for him to dive into American cinema. Here are my five favorite films featuring Bernal. He actually appears in two films releasing this weekend, the new M. Night Shyamalan Old film as well as a small foreign language effort called Ema.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)

Before Alfonso Cuaron made a name for himself with broad American audiences with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he worked on smaller films, both in his native Mexico and for American audiences with lesser known outings like A Little Princess and Great Expectations. However, it was Y Tu Mama Tambien, the acclaimed road trip drama, that earned him his biggest acclaim yet and set him on a collision course with Oscars for Gravity and Roma.

Starring Bernal and Diego Luna as best friends who take a road trip with Maribel Verdú as they discover more about each other and themselves. This sexually charged drama features superb performances from all three principals who must blend jovial jocularity with bitter recrimination in a fascinating exploration of youth, sexual liberation, and self-determination. As his second film that he had written the screenplay for, Cuaron’s talent was obvious and the end result is a compelling picture that showcased what a talent Bernal would become.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Bernal’s 10th feature film would ultimately prove to be one of his best as he took on the role of future revolutionary Ché Guevara as he embarks on a motorcycle road trip that exposed him to the inequities facing the people of several South American countries that would ultimately lead to his push for liberation for all the oppressed people. Although his methods were questionable and the end results didn’t last as long as he had hoped, getting a glimpse into the heart and mind of such a young political figure helps the audience better understand how someone can go from principled young man to countercultural hero.

Bernal was directed by Walter Salles, whose first film to flirt with Oscar was 1998’s Central Station, one of two non-English language films that scored nominations outside of Best Foreign Language Film that year. The film also earned a nomination for the superb Fernanda Montenegro who easily gave one of the year’s best performances. That film was just a sampling of what was to come in this, what may be his best film.

Babel (2006)

Having worked with Bernal in 2000 for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s feature debut, the future Oscar winner brought Bernal back into the fold with his 2006 multi-thread Oscar winner Babel, which took a look at the devastating drug war in the United States. As each member of a starry cast is impacted by illegal narcotics in different ways, Inarritu proved himself an able ensemble director with two Oscar nominations going to supporting actors Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza and an array of prominent Hollywood figures putting forth strong performances including future Oscar winners Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

Bernal’s role is a strong, but minor part in the film as a fellow immigrant attending the wedding of Barraza’s son. Barraza is a nanny who has taken the two children she’s caring for across the border into Mexico. Her harrowing experience forms the emotion-charged backbone for the story as she risks her life and deportation to get the children help when Bernal’s drunken chauffeur abandons them in the desert. This is a film that you don’t watch for Bernal’s presence, even though he is solid in the small role he’s given, but for the rest of the impressive ensemble who are given far more to do in it. Perhaps not the strongest film of his or Inarritu’s careers, but it was an English-language success that brought both broader and more intriguing work as a result.

Blindness (2008)

Based on a novel by Jose Saramago, Blindness is a post-apocalyptic drama about a pandemic wherein the victims become blind. A former asylum becomes home to the afflicted where they become overcrowded and oppressed as the building becomes little more than a concentration camp that the government ignores and neglects. Mark Ruffalo plays one of the early victims of the plague who is accompanied to the camp by his sighted wife (Julianne Moore) who claims blindness in order to stay with him. The film co-stars Danny Glover, Maury Chaykin, Alice Braga, and Bernal, who becomes one of the villains of the piece.

Set in a soon-to-be dystopian future, we see how a fearful government and populace can turn on their fellow citizens and treat those afflicted as second class citizens. The novel was written well before the incidents of 9/11 allowed the government to encroach on the rights of its citizenry, but the film adaptation was released in the aftermath of the George W. Bush administration and its use of torture and its devaluation of the public’s rights> This gives the film an added element of salience. Looking at the film in hindsight, especially with the ongoing deadly pandemic, the importance of the film increases as it presents a cautionary tale about how a desperate situation can be exploited and the average citizen can go from being respected to being dehumanized at the whim of a tyrant.

No (2012)

Director Pablo Larrain has emerged as one of the finest young directors in the modern era. His first film was released in 2006 but this 2012 film marked a high point for the director ahead of his glimpse into the tragedy surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its impact on the life of the First Lady, Jackie. In No, Bernal plays a talented ad executive who is tasked with coming up with a potent and visible campaign to help push fascistic dictator Augusto Pinochet from power.

Bernal delivers one of his best performances to date as a man frustrated by the tyranny of his government while being fearful for his own survival under a boss who is in favor of Pinochet’s government under the brutal military junta. It’s a fascinating picture that gives audiences a glimpse into the challenging political situations throughout South America and embraces the notion of freedom, love, and respect through a film that’s about creating pride in one’s electoral participation. Civic pride is something that has often been diminished in other nations, especially the United States, and this look at events outside of the U.S. only helps to emphasize the struggles of the voting public even in supposedly free, democratically-elected governments around the world.