Revolving Door

LATINA WOMEN never leave you guessing. No matter what mood they are in, where they are from or how old they may be; whether they are caressing each other’s breasts, murdering their husbands or defying the US government; their passion is among the greatest renewable resources on earth. Every spring, the Chicago Latino Film Festival reminds us how lucky we are to have them in and around the United States.

This year kicked off at AMC’s River East Theater, where actresses from Chicago’s Teatro Luna interrupted the sensation of opening night just as the lights were dimming for the premiere of “Viaje Redondo.” Dressed in traditional Mexicana finery, las vaqueras launched into a performance dialogue about the centennial anniversary of Mexican independence and the dynamic identity of modern Latino culture, increasing the delightfully startled audience’s pride with every word.

Then the show began.

“Viaje Redondo” follows the accidental friendship of two young women from different backgrounds who journey through the Mexican countryside. Fernanda leaves the privilege of upper class Mexico City to track down a boy who may or may not be her soulmate. Lucia forsakes the charm of an Acapulco beauty shop to seek a job in the United States, hoping to secure a better future for her son. Along the way, they break down in the desert, act up in a cantina, toy with the effect their bodies have on men and, during a moment of spontaneous motel intimacy, toy with each other.

Salacious, indeed; but the film is much more than some carnal hijinks. “It’s about two women looking for acceptance,” observed a retired suburban high school Spanish teacher. Humor and innocence underscore their individual longings. Ultimately, they choose separate paths; but each seemed to lead straight to the River East Arts Center, where the audience discussed their destinies with music and wine at La Noche de Mexicana fiesta after the film.

In “Death Do Us Part,” Chicago-based writer, director and producer Juan Zavaleta dramatized women acting on an entirely different emotion: vengeance. Recalling the anger and pain of a few real-life brides who endured the trials of divorce, he carried out “this crazy plan they keep talking about” in make-believe crimes of passion.

Romanian actress Felicia Danisor stars as the exotic wife of a soon to be murdered white man, but neither ethnic commingling nor spousal gringocide affect the plot. “It’s a universal theme not connected just to Latinos,” Zavaleta notes. “I think women will connect regardless.”

Indeed, Danisor’s performance leaves little to else to think about. “Every now and then she got so intense we had to bring it down,” Zavaleta recalls. He tempered the horror with humor, noting, “she’s involved in a lot of absurd situations.”

This emotional duality set the tone during production as well. When they shot a body-dumping scene on the banks of the Chicago River near Chinatown, there was no fence to protect them from falling or permit to legalize their filming. Zavaleta laughs about it, explaining, “We didn’t want to get arrested.”

The fear of arrest not only threatened Director Esaú Melendez while he created the Festival’s Winner for Best Documentary, “Immigrant Nation”, it dominated the film’s theme. He spent four years recording the story of Elvira Arellano, the outspoken, Mexican-born, US-undocumented single mother who rejected the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation demands from the sanctuary of a Humboldt Park Methodist church.

“Everybody was very concerned about a lot of things,” Melendez recalls. “In this film you see some of it.”

On each of the three sold-out nights “Immigrant Nation” played, the theater was packed with people who came from somewhere else: Felipe literally ran over the Tijuana border, Maria rode in a van from Guatemala, and the director himself remembers the time his mother moved the family from a leafy suburb of Mexico City to the West Side barrio of Pilsen, when he was a teenage boy, thinking, “Man, I’m going to meet Michael Jordan.”

Things turned out differently: he got introduced to gang violence, transferred from a dangerous high school to a slightly less dangerous one and channeled a woman’s courage into an award-winning documentary. Although he felt like “just a guy with a camera” when he first heard about Elvira’s struggle, his knowledge of and respect for a mother’s strength took shape many years earlier.

“Elvira is a single mom,” he explains. “My mom was a single mom. When making this film, it was gonna be the heart and it was going to affect me personally.”

- Added: 6/23/2010 1:23:35 AM

-Dan Patton