By M. Sellers Johnson. How do you go through the scenes in life, with what face, with what attitude? It’s really something you can’t choose. You think you can choose but you can’t.” -Luis Ortega From perceptive newcomers like Tomás Gómez Bustillo to internationally regarded directors such as Lucretia Martel […]
A Strange Passion Indeed: Luis Buñuel’s Él (1953)
By Jeremy Carr. This story of hidden obsessions and malicious passions, climaxing in a scene of wild delirium, is like a bipolar soap opera and tragicomedy rolled into one subtly piercing satire of masculinity, authority, and persecution.” A Good Friday mass is underway. Somber music plays while altar boys have […]
“Why Did Fate Make You a Sinner?”: Victims of Sin (1951, Criterion Collection)
By Jeremy Carr. Its pulp façade encases a genuine, sincere examination of sundry motivations, dilemmas, and outcomes, routinely begging the question stated in one its many songs: ‘Why did fate make you a sinner?’” Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del Pecado, is an aptly titled Mexican melodrama where the concept […]
A Culture of Violence, with Questions Unanswered: Teodora Ana Miha’s La Civil
By Yun-hua Chen. A compelling portrait of not only a society plagued by violence, and one that conditions its members to be indifferent, irresponsive, and numb.” In Northern Mexico, Cielo’s (Arcelia Ramírez) day starts like any mundane morning. Her daughter Laura lovingly makes her up, jokingly self-compliments their beauty (“like […]
Horror and Feminist Reconstruction – An Interview with Michelle Garza Cevera on Huesera: The Bone Woman
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. It was very important to start the film as one that portrayed how big motherhood feels in society, how sacred and untouchable it is, and in certain ways, how it rules our lives – as women we’re trying to feed that unreachable goal of becoming this perfect caring […]
Gentle Mary: Michelle Garza Cervera’s Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. The scariest thing in Huesera is not the ghostly bone woman, but the all-too-real fear that one may choose the wrong path when faced with one of life’s many forked roads.” Among a throng of worshippers, a young woman climbs the stone steps leading to a […]