{"id":46186,"date":"2025-01-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46186"},"modified":"2025-01-22T02:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T07:05:14","slug":"the-perfect-tomato-aka-el-tomate-perfecto-short-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/21\/the-perfect-tomato-aka-el-tomate-perfecto-short-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Tomato (aka El Tomate Perfecto) (short) (2024)\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A family, grand-father, mother, daughter, living together face the reality of their situation when the mother has a career opportunity in the city and the grand-father doesn\u2019t want to change their way of life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Written and directed by Cristobal Abugaber, this short film packs a lot in a short time, showing the closeness in the family, their struggles, their disagreements, and a satisfactory resolution in the end. The writing here is solid, the direction works really well, and the film is tightly edited, showing what we need, cutting anything that is unnecessary. The tale told here is one of so many families, in the film\u2019s country of origins of Mexico (and United States for sake of complete information), where the family lives, works, and goes to school. The film explains a few things about their backgrounds, but not so much that it becomes an exposition film. Here, the characters are allowed to be and to live, to have hopes and dreams, to win and to fail, to have love and to have difficulties. It\u2019s a well-written, strong short film that is winning prizes on the festival circuit for a reason.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The cast here is fairly small with Eligio Mel\u00e9ndez playing the grand-father, Mar\u00eda Mel\u00e9ndez as his adult daughter, and Mar\u00eda Fernanda Ayala as the grand-daughter. All three of them give solid performances with Eligio Mel\u00e9ndez being the stand-out of the three, giving a solid performance that is the backbone of the film and of the cast. He gives his character strength, vulnerability, and a bit of macho toughness that is required by the part. Mar\u00eda Mel\u00e9ndez complements his performance and stands out in her own way, giving the viewer a good counterpart for him and another view on the story and situation. Mar\u00eda Fernanda Ayala gives a good performance too, showing the right levels of emotion and innocence for her part while being a performer on par with those playing her elders here.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The cinematography here is by Brendan Sweeney (and team) and it makes good use of both the fields and the house location as well as the sequences in the back of a truck. His work here is good and shows the story and characters clearly so that they can be given a chance to shine without artifices. This is good work and must be lauded.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Perfect Tomato is a short film that brings reality to the screen without too much artifices, giving the characters all the room their need to be and to become. There is something here that pulls the viewer in and makes them want to see more of these characters while also being fully satisfied with the little window into their lives they are being given.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A family, grand-father, mother, daughter, living together face the reality of their situation when the mother has a career opportunity in the city and the grand-father doesn\u2019t want to change their way of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[302],"class_list":["post-46186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46187,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46186\/revisions\/46187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}