It’s also worth noting that Fearing Future sometimes upends narrative conventions. Salas could have turned Jazmín into a wide-eyed ingénue, but she instead portrays her as confident and emotionally mature. Moreover, Leo doesn’t act on his feelings for Jazmín for most of the film. At one point, when he claims that it’d be inappropriate to do so, the film almost feels subversive, as though it were playing with our expectation that the two of them are going to quickly get together and have a torrid sexual affair.
“…upends narrative conventions…”
Ultimately, however, none of these techniques or subversions make up for Sesma’s disinterest in character development. After introducing Leo as a stereotypically failed writer, the film makes next to no effort to add nuance to this portrayal. Most of the scenes in the film only serve to emphasize how miserable Leo’s life is, and as a consequence, they merely reinforce the notion that he’s just a stereotypically failed writer.
Perhaps the worst part of Fearing Future is its treatment of Jazmín. We never learn anything about her background or her motivations for pursuing Leo. And as a result, she comes off as an auxiliary character, someone whose only reason for existing is to make Leo feel better about himself. Films about relationships between young women and older men are often implicitly sexist – and in totally failing to develop Jazmín, Fearing Future proves that it’s no exception to that rule.
"…relationships between old men and young women are often implicitly sexist..."
