Documentary The In Between sees director and journalist Robie Flores returning to her hometown of Eagle Pass TX, on the border with Mexico. She comes back to revisit the town in the wake of the death of her younger brother, Marcelo, whom she calls “Mars.”
After High School, Flores went to New York University for a master’s degree in journalism; from there, she worked for CNN and Bloomberg. Her life seemed to be a rocket ride to success when, in July 2015, Marcelo died unexpectedly at just 23. In the crushing grief for her brother, she struggled to recall specific good memories of him, though she knew they had wonderful times together. To reconnect with him and with her past, she returned to Eagle Pass. She mined through footage they had shot together, and that led her to create The In Between as a snapshot of what life is like as a Fronterizo in a small border town.
This meditation on life as someone who doesn’t wholly fit in American or Mexican culture is a reflective film that reveals the intimate moments, from the pedestrian events of a regular day to the differences it makes being in a multi-cultural place and family.
The best voices at this time and place are those of the children growing up there who haven’t yet understood the bigger picture of political and cultural wars. Looking to the other side of the Rio Grande, they know people come across, but they are innocent of what that means.
“…Flores returning to her hometown of Eagle Pass TX…”
Life in Eagle Pass is much the same as anywhere in “Small Town U.S.A.,” with the added flavor of Mexican culture mixed in. Kids go to school, learn to dance, discover music, spend family bonding time, go to High School football games, and have all the other normal experiences. Eventually, they go on to whatever career and life awaits.
Flores chooses to show us this life instead of talking it to death, and this decision is what sets The In Between apart and makes it shine. She rolls back the clock of her own life to travel along with kids who are in those stages now. Instead of interviews, the viewer is invited to witness these coming-of-age events. There’s a quiet sense of calm well-being in the proceedings. We are parked as a camera in a quinceañera and a prom. We are sitting in a folding chair at a family barbecue.
By reminiscing about her own life, she hopes to find some happy memories of Marcelo. She includes footage of him in ordinary moments. By weaving Marcelo into the tapestry of these other lives, she’s reconstructing their life together and giving him a kind of immortality.
The In Between is a quiet film with a poignant mix of joy and sorrow, which are not separate things here, which come across as perceptions or aspects of the same moment. A memory may bring either, depending on the current context. The cinematography is shot in the moment, with nothing contrived, scripted, or rehearsed, and so varies accordingly. This is a film built in the edit, and it ebbs and flows with a beautiful rhythm. Whatever the film may have given to Flores, she is sharing these moments with us in a graceful offering so that we may see these lives that are not so different from ours.
"…coming back to revisit the town in the wake of the death of her younger brother,"
