Tube televisions and tapes that need to be blown to play on Nintendo. Meanwhile, just like lava from the volcano, puberty progresses. Choosing a console that was a symbol of an entire generation and building a narrative from it is no easy task, but it is masterfully done in the movie Death of Nintendo.
Paolo (Noel Comia Jr) lives with an overprotective mother, always expecting an earthquake. He wants to get a circumcision to grow bigger, he’s tormented by a bully and he has a crush on Shiara (Elijah Alejo), who gets closer to his friend, Mimaw (Kim Chloie Oquendo). Mimaw bridges the gap between the two by inviting Paolo to a “ghost hunt” at the cemetery one Good Friday.
The easiest way out to resolve the conflict in the film would be to use the cliché “love was closer than he imagined” and unite Paolo and Mimaw. It almost happens, with a kiss that goes nowhere, but the film chooses another path: turning Mimaw into a protagonist like the boys. She’s there in every important scene, and the ending is built all around her.
Nintendo and I is yet another film from the vein of audiovisual productions about a non-WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant) adolescence, that is, about the adolescence of a person who does not fit the North American pattern perpetuated by Hollywood. By choosing to focus on a Filipino Catholic family, the film chooses not to treat them as bizarre, always respecting the truth and not falling into stereotypes. This could happen thanks to the minds behind the scenes.
Nintendo & Me was written and produced by a woman, Valerie Castillo Martinez, but directed by a man, Raya Martin. Valerie is also the film’s producer, and has created her production company to make films that deal with underrepresented subjects and cross-cultural themes, inverting the usual narrative clichés.
Valerie and Raya lived in the same neighborhood and were schoolmates. About the film and her youth, Raya Martin says: “It was the time of the emergence of the internet, and we were all fascinated with the virtual world. I felt very close to this story, but I also suggested that the character of Mimaw be given more prominence in the film. That feeling of inequality was really important to me, being gay and growing up in an environment where I couldn’t tell anyone.”
Comparisons with other films are inevitable. Nintendo and I draw heavily from the source of “Conta Comigo”, a 1986 cult that lives in the hearts of millions. Both films deal with friendship – no coming-of-age seems to exist without a strong group of friends – and with growth from a nostalgic look, nostalgia that never becomes corny, but talks with the viewer and their memories. .
I remember perfectly the little shop where I bought my Mickey 3 game for the Super Nintendo that I had as a child. The same game that, despite never having passed the third stage, became the subject of the school newspaper, the same newspaper where I published my first film review. Nintendo is a symbol for a generation, something that stirs our affective memories, and that is why we understand the characters of Nintendo and I so well: we, in a “good time that will never come back”, were once like them.
Some things are not clear in the film, the main one being: Lina, who lives with Paolo and his mother, is she a very dear employee or some kind of relative or associate? This doubt, however, does not prevent us from liking the film. A coming-of-age from the third world, Nintendo and I will talk to everyone who was a kid in the 90s, and present an incredible world for those who didn’t live this golden age on consoles and in life.
