Movie Blog: Three Films From 'Cine Latino'
This weekend kicks off Cine Latino, a film festival put on by the Film Society of Minneapolis-St. Paul that seeks to celebrate movies in Spanish and Portuguese.
Thirty-eight films are part of the lineup, and most of them screen twice. The two venues showing the films are the St. Anthony Main Theatre, and The Heart of the Beast Theatre. Both are in Minneapolis.
Below are capsule reviews of a few of the films in this wide-ranging lineup.
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Bad Hair (Pelo Malo)
Directed by Mariana Rondón (Venezuela)
Screening on Sunday, Nov. 2 at 4:30 p.m. at St. Anthony Main, and on Monday, Nov. 3 at 9:20 p.m. at St. Anthony Main
The most impressive aspect of Bad Hair is how evenly writer/director Mariana Rondón treats her characters. None quite fits the familiar archetype of hero or villain, and that makes them feel almost uncomfortably human. The story focuses on an effeminate boy named Junior (Samuel Lange), who becomes obsessed with straightening his curly 'fro for a school photo, in which he wants to look like a pop singer. This enrages/terrifies his mother (Samantha Castillo), who's out of work while raising Junior and his baby brother in the slums. Poverty, here, is the main threat. It's why, we feel, the mother reacts so negatively to the thought of her son being gay, and thereby weak. How is he going to succeed when the macho culture crushes him for his sexuality? And it's tragic because Junior never really announces he's gay. He just dances differently, or becomes dazzled by another boy's eyes. He's only just becoming aware of who he is, and immediately cultural forces are at work against him. Yet, hope remains. Rondón captures it wonderfully in a clever credit sequence at the film's finale.
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Food Chains
Directed by Sanjay Rawal (USA)
Screening on Saturday, Nov. 12 at 12:10 p.m. at St. Anthony Main
The title of this documentary relates not only to supply chains, but to the chains of "modern-day slavery" that farm workers in this country might experience. Filmmaker Sanjay Rawal follows a group of tomato pickers in Florida who've been working for years to get supermarket chains like Publix to pay just a penny more per basket -- a move which would effectively double what the tomato pickers make, and hardly raise supermarket prices. See, the argument here is that since there are only a few supermarket chains at the top of the food supply, change has to start with them. Rawal also delves into history, showing that since the abolishment of slavery, the people who do farm work aren't white Americans. They're people who come here for new opportunities and find themselves stuck working extremely hard for very little money. And the problem isn't only an American one, it's systematic to industrial nations the world over. But progress, as the film shows, can be made to stop it. Familiar faces in this doc include Eva Longoria ("Desperate Housewives") and author Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation"). Food Chains is narrated by Forest Whitaker.
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Spanish Affiar
Directed by Emilio Martínez-Lázar (Spain)
Screening on Saturday, Nov. 1 at 7:15 p.m. at St. Anthony Main and Sunday, Nov. 2 at 7:10 p.m. at St. Anthony Main
Although Spain is only about twice the size of Minnesota, the differences between cultures in its different autonomous communities is notorious. If you follow futbol, you know this. People in Spain's various regions take great pride in where they're from, and a few of the country's communities have historically sought independence from the Spanish crown. Director Emilio Martínez-Lázaro has fun with these sometimes serious differences in telling a bonkers love story between a loud Andalusian named Rafa (Dani Rovira) and a reserved Basque girl named Amaia (Clara Lago). After a one-night stand, the plucky southern boy ventures north get the Basque girl to be his woman, and ends up having to pretend he's Basque to impress the girl's father. While the jokes don't always translate, the film's wacky tone allows it to cruise on an unpredictable trajectory, so even if you're not too interested in the drama, you still want to see what happens. In short, Spanish Affair is a comedic experiment about how opposites attract, especially in a country known for its civil division.
