“A pillar of Mexican independent cinema, Arturo Ripstein has been directing films since 1966. That’s to say, he has confronted audiences with gnarly reflections of their own cultural realities for six decades straight. His preferred method: adaptations of local crime stories designed to shock and illuminate.” 📽️ 🇲🇽 🎞️ 🗽 #film #cinema #movies #CineMastodon #ArturoRipstein #NYCMovieGoing

https://www.screenslate.com/articles/feedback-loop-bad-and-beautiful

El lugar sin límites [The Place Without Limits] (Arturo Ripstein, 1978)

Aug

13

Gay Uncles Day

Pancho (Gonzalo Vega) watches La Manuela (Roberto Cobo) dance flamenco for him. DP: Miguel Garzón.

Cabaretera, a sub-genre from the Epoca de Oro (the golden epoch of Mexican filmmaking, 1930s—1950s), combines film noir with melodrama and musical numbers. Often set in cabarets (brothels), these films talk about the plight of the prostitute who – not without their pride and dignity – are forced to being the breadwinner in a poverty-stricken community.

El lugar sin límites harks back to those days. We follow the plight of La Manuela, a transvestite* who together with daughter La Japonesita works as a fichera (a dancehall performer) in the brothel run by Madame La Japonesa, La Japonesita's mother.

The return of Pancho, a hyper-macho trucker, disrupts the family regime. The trucker's attraction to the #flamenco dancing fichera is at odds with his machismo. Him being outed as a maricón (a Mexican slur for homosexual) would be the end of his world.

El lugar remains a groundbreaking film, not only in how it handles taboos like #gender roles and trans- and homosexuality, but also because it highlights how (self) destructive #machismo is in Mexican society.

Sergio de la Mora's excellently researched EL LUGAR SIN LÍMITES: Ripstein in Review delves much deeper than this little writeup here. Do read it (spoilers ahead).

*Roberto Cobo's La Manuela is transsexual. The term “transvestite” is what's used in the film and typical for its time.

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #GayUnclesDay #ArturoRipstein #JoséDonoso #RobertoCobo #GonzaloVega #JoaquínGutiérrezHeras #JoséPadilla #MiguelGarzón #BookAdaptation #LGBT #drama #Mexico #1970s