Hispanic Heritage Month
The past and present of Spanish language cinema
We’re nearing the end of the month of September, but we’re only halfway through National Hispanic American Heritage Month in the United States! This celebration of diasporic cultures will run until October 15.
It’s become a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine to point out how often Spanish language cinema is ignored by validators of taste. These films are often put aside in the canon, and it’s embarrassingly frequent to see a major festival not have any new films from any of these countries in their lineups. I continue to be amazed by the depths of great work that comes out of these regions, so I figured I’d round up six1 favorites — half old, half new — to illustrate just
CLASSIC
🇦🇷 — The Official Story
It’s not hard to see why this Argentinian drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (as it was then called) — the first for any Latin American country. Co-writer/director Luis Puenzo wrings exquisite tension out of the country’s very fresh historical traumas just two years after the end of their military dictatorship. Through her adopted daughter, an upper-class woman in Buenos Aires realizes the terror in her country to which she turned a blind eye. The tragedy of Argentinian Desaparecidos (“disappeared peoples”) becomes personal as she probes the origins of the adoption. The film plays like a thriller as she approaches the truth that had been hiding in plain sight.
The Official Story is available on Max.
🇨🇺 — Memories of Underdevelopment
The New Waves of Europe washed ashore in Cuba in the ‘60s, as clearly shown through Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment. This tale of a Cuban writer who sticks around through the revolution and Missile Crisis recalls vintage Godard or Fellini. Though half a century old now, it still feels fresh and invigorating to plunge into Sergio’s mind. This work proves valuable as both cultural and cinematic history.
Memories of Underdevelopment is available on the Criterion Channel.
🇪🇸 — The Executioner
If you’re under the (mistaken) impression that classic cinema feels mustily mired in mothballs, let Luis García Berlanga’s The Executioner shake you out of that belief with uproarious laughter. This pitch-black satire from Francoist Spain follows the antics of a truly odd professional couple, an old executioner who can’t find a suitor for his daughter and a younger funeral parlor worker who can’t find a wife. Their fates become linked as they confront bureaucratic rot and try to push the ethical concerns over their state service out of mind (at least for the younger man). It’s not hard to see how this film’s subversive, wickedly irreverent tone imprinted itself on Spain’s contemporary master Pedro Almodóvar.
The Executioner is available on the Criterion Channel.
CONTEMPORARY
🇨🇱 — The Mole Agent
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to have the rug pulled out from under me by a documentary than I was watching The Mole Agent. This Chilean documentary by Maite Alberdi started off as a noir-like spy tale and wound up in a totally different place before I could even sense what it was doing. Alberdi begins with an unusual newspaper classified ad: a private investigator seeks a spy … in their eighties or nineties! The assignment is to send a senior citizen into a nursing home to investigate potential theft and/or abuse, as requested by the child of a resident there. What Sergio, the winner, finds is that while there might be some petty theft at the facility, what really ails these women is their loneliness and isolation. With time, he realizes that the real benefit he can provide to the residents of the nursing home is comfort, companionship, and compassion.
The Mole Agent is available on Hulu.
🇨🇴 — Monos
Yes, that’s Moises Arias from Hannah Montana. He’s quite chilling in Alejandro Landes’ Monos, a mood-heavy movie about a group of teenage militia members and the American prisoner they keep watch over in the jungle. This is a film far less interested in a conventional plot or making a “point” about the child soldiers than it is about evoking observations about them through image and movement. It’s a singular experience pulsating with ideas. (If you like the sonic stylings of composer Mica Levi — Under the Skin, Jackie — you’re in for a treat here.)
🇬🇹 — Tremors
The institutional church still exerts a great deal of force in contemporary Latin America, and filmmakers are often at the vanguard of forcing people of faith to live up to their ideals. Jayro Bustamante’s tender, humanistic Tremors translates this struggle into deeply personal terms as Francisco steps away from his wife and two children to begin a life with his male lover. He’s given the “option” to remain in his church community, but it involves some variation on deprogramming or conversion therapy. Without portraying his native Guatemala as exceptionally primitive or backward, Bustamante makes a persuasive case for everyone’s ability to live and love as they need.
Tremors is available for free with ads on Tubi.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
Prepare yourselves for the earworms of 2023’s awards season…
This New Yorker multimedia spread on why Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love has become a generational aesthetic touchstone is a captivating scroll.
My NYFF coverage started early — I reviewed All of Us Strangers for Slant Magazine.
For Decider, I said stream it to Sanctuary on Hulu and skip it to The Black Book on Netflix.
Subscribers got to read the transcript of my first moderated Q&A conducted over the summer.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Back next week with October’s Upstream!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
I know the optics of not having the usual ten and can only plead the tiredness of New York Film Festival kicking into full swing here. I hope to make this a recurring yearly feature and make it even more robust moving forward!