Nicole Kidman Chills, Mexican Family Drama And Love Across Decades
Camila Mendes stepped into the Criterion Closet and came out talking ghosts, family, romance and the movies that stay lodged in your head long after the credits roll. No sample rack, no stilettos—just shelves packed with cinema and an actor ready to dig.
Her picks move from the candlelit dread of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others to the intimate emotional pulse of Lila Avilés’s Tótem and the decades-spanning romance of Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy.
Discover More
Build A Closet Worth Rewatching
Camila Mendes’s selections move from gothic chills to tender family drama and one of cinema’s most lived-in love stories. Start thee shelf with the films she could not leave behind.
Some links may be affiliate links. INYIM may earn from qualifying purchases.
Mendes lights up over Nicole Kidman in The Others, Amenábar’s 2001 gothic ghost story about a mother keeping her light-sensitive children sealed inside a shadowy country estate. Criterion describes the film as a supernatural chiller built on guilt, trauma and repression, but Camila’s enthusiasm gets straight to thee point: Kidman is operating on another level.
She finds a different kind of beauty in Tótem. Avilés’s 2023 Mexican drama follows seven-year-old Sol through a bustling family gathering arranged for her terminally ill father, balancing grief with warmth, humor and the tiny details that make a household feel alive.
Then comes The Before Trilogy, Linklater’s evolving portrait of Jesse and Céline across Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Mendes zeroes in on how naturally the films capture the shifting nuances of falling in love—not as one frozen movie moment, but as something that changes with time, choices and all the conversations in between.
What makes a Closet Picks visit fun is not simply the stack—it is hearing which performance, image or emotional truth made somebody reach for that particular case. Mendes’s lineup slides easily between fear, family and romance without treating any of them like lightweight territory.
Inside Camila Mendes’s Criterion Closet Visit
From shelf browsing to the final stack, Camila makes her way through a movie lover’s dream room.
Camila Mendes searches the Criterion Closet and shares the films that inspire, unsettle and move her.
It is a sharp little tour through her movie brain: a Nicole Kidman performance worth worshipping, a contemporary Mexican film built from fragile family moments and a romantic trilogy that refuses to pretend love stops changing after the first kiss.
Watch Camila Mendes Reveal Her Criterion Closet Picks
The official Closet Picks video follows Mendes as she browses the shelves and explains the performances, filmmakers and love stories behind her selections.
Source: The Criterion Collection. Video via Criterion’s official YouTube.
