Tortillaphilia A Guide To Things That Matter

I never intended to watch Mike Flanagan’s entire oeuvre, but here we are, and as I’m four movies in, the completionist in me won’t let me stop now. His recent films and TV shows have, after all, been uniformly good. Absentia, one of the director’s earlier works, is also worth a watch, despite being filmed a budget that never could prop up its ambitions.

Produced on a shoestring $70,000—a third or so of which was Kickstarted —_Absentia_ follows a fairly standard plot on the surface: Tricia is forced to declare her husband dead in absentia after he has been missing for seven years. Soon after, she starts having nightmares and seeing apparitions. Her sister has similarly strange experiences in a nearby tunnel, a place that is… Well, it is something, including the center of the movie.

In the grander scheme of Flanagan’s works, Absentia isn’t among his best. The foundation is there, but the story doesn’t live up to what the plot sets up. Overall, the production is high on the indie-on-a-budget spectrum, which is just fine, but the execution isn’t as polished as what Flanagan achieved with Oculus and Hush. (I also assume those had a slightly larger budget; The Haunting of Hill House obviously had a bottomless pit type of budget.)

Yet, Flanagan and crew make it work. The lo-fi æsthetics give Absentia a gritty feel, and as the story unfolds, the mythology it sets up is intriguing, even though it doesn’t entirely pay off. Had they filmed it today, the movie would likely have been more Haunting… than Oculus.

Overall, though, Absentia is a must watch for anyone who enjoys Flanagan’s recent work, and thanks to Netflix, that’s many. The path from then to now is interesting, plus Absentia is a good watch on its own merits.

Bonus! Our deep-dive into other Flanagan movies:

• Oculus
• Hush
• The Haunting of Hill House

Trailer

I like to believe that those of us who consider ourselves fans of The Room do so without a snarky, ironic detachment. Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus might not objectively be good, but it was undeniably made with a lot of heart. Read co-star/line-producer (an impossible combination) Greg Sestero’s book on the movie, The Disaster Artist, and you’ll have a newfound appreciation for what Wiseau wanted to create, too. The Room might be a story of misplaced self-pity, but then, how many of us can claim to have made an enduring cult classic when we were down in the dumps? The Room is, for all its warts, an inspiring and hypnotically fascinating movie.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from the Sestero-penned Best F(r)iends duo of films (which I consider a singular entity). I knew it was inspired by the writer’s friendship with Wiseau (which miraculously survived the nightmare filming of The Room), and that the latter’s role was specifically written for him. What I did not expect, was that Best F(r)iends, for all intents and purposes, is Sestero’s The Room. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an almost infinitely better movie, but if The Room serves as Wiseau’s view on the duo’s friendship, Best F(r)iends is Sestero’s perspective. And while The Room unintentionally was bizarre, Best F(r)iends is purposefully strange, dreamlike, and surreal.

We follow Sestero’s Jon (in a nod to The Room’s Johnny) who befriends his new mortician employer, Wiseau’s Harvey, a man of unknown age, with a mysterious past. Soon, Jon hatches a plan to sell gold fillings picked from the morgue’s bodies, kicking off a downward spiral of greed and paranoia. It’s something out of a David Lynch movie.

Fans of The Disaster Artist and The Room will be served a number of nods and references to those two works—IMDb’s trivia section doesn’t even come close to cover it—yet it never feels forced. Sestero and Wiseau consider Best F(r)iends the second part of The Room trilogy (James Franco’s The Disaster Artist adaptation the third), and the symbiosis is natural. It’s a fascinating watch.

How good of a standalone movie Best F(r)iends is, I don’t know—I’m too entrenched in The Room lore to be able to determine that. It certainly has its flaws, and the first thirty minutes could easily have been compressed into a third of that. At times, the limited budget becomes painfully apparent, and additional takes could have helped some of the more painful scenes.

Yet, I can’t help but find a lot of things to like, even for those who know nothing about The Room. The colors look gorgeous, and the film has a very distinct visual style. It’s the bizarro The Room. And god help me: Wiseau is great. He is, of course, 100% playing himself, which probably is the extent of his range, but the character fits Best F(r)iends perfectly. I don’t think anyone else (sans Franco in character as Wiseau) could have played Harvey.

The soundtrack, too, fits the tone of the movie with its ambiance and sonic landscape.

Best F(r)iends exists in its own surreal, little world, just like The Room does, and while it might be the second entry in a loose trilogy, it deserves to be recognized as a cult movie in its own right. It’s weird and often wonderful, and Wiseau and Sestero clearly have a lot of fun on screen.

The ending sets up for a volume three. I would welcome it: The world, as it is today, needs Wiseau and Sestero to bring their particular style of joy to it and us.

Trailer

When you find something new and exotic in faraway lands, it is just natural to want to keep exploring the phenomenon at home. Does the discovery exist here? Does it measure up? Can you relive the glory of another culture?

These were questions raised after we sampled tortas ahogadas in Guadalajara. On the surface, it seems like the sandwiches should exist in Seattle, but a major caveat is the bread, which, allegedly, can only be baked in Guadalajara. The ahogada comes drowned in sauce, and a solid foundation is needed for the sandwich not to turn into mush.

We have found a handful of spots around town that make ahogada, and, if Señor Villa is anything to go by, it sounds like the claims of proper bread only existing in Guadalajara might be right.

To its credit, the WeRoRa¹ restaurant delivered a well-flavored sandwich. The sauce was right up there with what we tried in Guadalajara: spicy, with smoky, distinct undertones. The traditional carnitas retained their bite, even when drenched in sauce. Put the fillings on a tortilla, and you’d have a legit taco.

The bread, though, faltered as the local Tapatío had warned. It was hard to make out the flavors, and a spoon was required to scoop up the sandwich. The baseline test had, in other words, failed, and the result was more of a flavorful bread pudding.

In that sense, we can recommend the sandwich for what it is, as it tasted good, but as an ahogada experience, it was a letdown. If that is something you can live with, you will at least enjoy an honest, savory attempt.

Maybe it does, indeed, come down to the required bread solely existing in Guadalajara. We will keep investigating because that is what we do: selflessly eat sandwiches as a public service to you, the tortillaphile.

¹ Wedgewood, Roosevelt, Ravenna.

A wise man once told me, a torta is a torta, and a torta will always be a torta, but is that actually the case? After a recent fact-finding mission to Jalisco, we can only say no.

Guadalajara is an experience different from what one might expect from Mexico’s second biggest city. It feels deceivingly small, with short buildings and a relative quietness; a far cry from the country’s more touristy areas. Start exploring, and you will find a city of art, culture, and, possibly most importantly, food. Specifically, the ahogada, Guadalajara’s signature torta.

I’m not entirely sure where we tried ours—it was a stop on the Street Tour, a recommended three-and-a-half hour mural and art walk—but you can find versions of it all over town. And if you’re in Guadalajara, it is of the uttermost importance you do so.

(Update! It was Tortas Ahogadas Las Famosas.)

Two main facets make the sandwich unique:

First is the birote bread, which is solely baked in the Guadalajara region. It looks like a baguette, but that’s where the similarities end. Eating the bread by itself would be hard—literally. It was designed to be drowned in sauce to become chewable, which is also the ahogada’s second differentiator. After filling the bread with the standards—pork, onions, etc.—you pour the sauce over, and the result is almost magical. No matter how much you use, you can still eat the bread with your hands. Sure, there’s the option of a spoon, but I’d consider that a mere backup. I ate the sandwich with my hands just fine.

Any ahogada shop worth its salt will give you multiple choices of sauces, too. I went with a spicier variety, but a more middle of the road variety was also available, as was one based on beans. Throw in your pick of pickled vegetables, and your torta is something different from anything I’ve tried before.

It’s hard to really compare the ahogada to a regular torta. The concept is the same, but the drowned birote is the polar opposite of its more common sweet, soft counterpart. All respect to the latter, but going back to it could prove to be a painful experience.

Can we recreate something similar here in Seattle, then? Make our own equivalent, or something close to it? In the next few weeks, we will try. Stand by for your Tortillaphilia™ report, coming soon.

Bonus fact!

Ahogada is, in fact, Spanish for drowned.