A guilt-ridden journalist tries everything, grasping at any “miracle treatments” straw, in an effort to save her disabled-at-birth son in “Lucca’s World,” an engrossing Around the World with Netflix weeper from Mexico.
Based on the non-fiction book by Bárbara Anderson, it’s about her endless “What have we got to lose?” efforts to undo what she feels was her failings in giving birth to baby Lucca (Julián Tello), a child diagnosed with pediatric cerebral palsy, given to epileptic seizures as well.
While we can guess that Bárbara ( Bárbara Mori) is unjustly blaming herself, and the burden these efforts place on the rest of the family — including chronically underemployed one-legged husband Andrés (Juan Pablo Medina) and their younger son — based on earlier films of this genre (“Lorenzo’s Oil,” etc.), what’s unexpected are the blunt depictions of the medical establishment.
Mexican doctors and hospitals might rightly insist that “the science” and data isn’t there to back up Bárbara’s latest hopes. But as a reporter, chance meetings and interviews with the wealthy and the connected point her to that one long shot that may pay off. And frank depictions of the opportunism and money-grubbing on the other side of this “miracle” device paint a portrait of the darker, bottom-line world of “medicine for the elite” and medicine that’s available to the rest of us.
No kidding, this film (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed into English) has the longest and most CYA “Based on a true story” opening credits you’re likely to ever see. Anderson’s book and Mariana Chenillo’s film has villains, and one in particular wears a lab coat and seems downright predatory at times. Names were changed, etc., to avoid lawsuits.
The rich and the sketchy are always quick to sue.
“Lucca’s World” takes us from that difficult birth through compassionate doctor’s struggling to “know the full extent” of the child’s “limitations.” Bárbara narrates her story and the family’s struggle to allow him to “do what the world denies” him. Not every country has an ADA, we’re reminded.
But there’s this Dr. Kumar in India, and this gadget — the cytotron — that’s being used for cancer and arthritus treatment. It stimulates the brain into working in therapeutic ways. Maybe it can reset Lucca’s brain to improve his quality of life.
Husband Andrés is skeptical, as Lucca’s expenses already have them drowning in debt. Lucca’s Mexican doctors dismiss the long shot attempt, going so far as to call the trek to India “life threatening.” But Dr. Go-Between (Ari Brickman) is always positive, always laying out the cost and the possibilities, facilitating even as he takes care to never let Bárbara speak directly to Dr. Kumar (Danish Husain).
Director and co-screenwriter Chenillo takes pains to show us the extent of Bárbara’s desperation as the family not only flies to India for a month of treatments, they visit local temples to hedge their religious bets as well.
The narrative allows us to focus on villains, and understand that — in the real world — such people must be worked around, as deposing entrenched pieces of the status quo is nigh on impossible.
The film honors doggedness, gets lost in arcane details on occasion and skims over the advantages Bárbara brings to the table. She’s a journalist, with access to information, the best people and those in power. She doesn’t even have to take the step of meeting and convincing a journalist to take up her child’s cause, which puts so many families with sick kids on local and national TV in the U.S., pleading for help.
But such movies thrive on the hope they present and the big moments when that hope is either proven or sadly dashed by the finale. And this “Lucca’s World” delivers.
Rating: TV-14
Cast: Bárbara Mori, Juan Pablo Medina, Julián Tello, Ari Brickman and Danish Husain.
Credits: Directed by Mariana Chenillo, scripted by Mariana Chenillo and Javier Peñalosa, based on the book by Bárbara Anderson. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:36
