Ratas, ratones, rateros

In most of Latin America, beneath the bottom in the social scale there still live people. And a lot of those people are children. Kids without parents. With no school. Bereft of the joys of childhood. Deprived of any future. Children for whom abuse, rape and even violent death are everyday occurrences.

This view ‘from underneath the bottom' is a recurrent theme in recent Latin American cinema or in movies based on Latin American novels.

A few examples: `Capitaes da Areia' (Engl. title ‘The sandpit generals'), directed by Hall Bartlett in 1972, written by Brazilian Jorge Amado, was based on true stories about streetwise rascals in Salvador de Bahía. Another Brazilian film, `Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco' (Hector Babenco, 1981) revived the same theme using real abandoned kids as players, and when Fernando Ramos Da Silva, the leading actor, was actually killed in those same streets, Paulo Halm and Jose Joffily continued the saga with the sequel `Quem matou Pixote?' (‘Who killed Pixote?', 1996).

In Argentina, the recent `Pizza, birra y faso' (Adrián Caetano & Bruno Stagnaro, 1997) reformulated the subject for present day Buenos Aires, and there are two great and dreadful Colombian films (both by Víctor Gaviria): `Rodrigo D.' (Engl. title ‘Rodrigo D: no future', 1990) and `La vendedora de rosas' (1998), which painted the same motif in still darker colors.

Now a new member has added to this family of true-to-life films, about the menacing insurgence of the desperado human products that arouse from the explosive mixture of extreme poverty, social segregation and a complete lack of hope.

The 1999 Ecuadorian film `Ratas, ratones, rateros' (Engl. title ‘Rodents') has just won the Trieste Latin Film Festival (both the Grand Prix and the Opera Prima awards), after being acclaimed at the ‘Mostra' in Venice and at the Toronto Film Festival. Its author (writer/director) is Sebastián Cordero, born in Ecuador (1972) and a graduate of USC. The film was completed on a very low budget (just below the 200,000 dollars line). 35 mm. 109 min.

‘Rodents' shares with its predecessors a common and implicit wrath against social injustice, a widespread compassion for its victims, a taste for street language and vulgarisms, a tragical and hopeless film ending and a certain apocalyptic comprehension of the future.

No one can blame Cordero because of this point of view. It's quite understandable. Ecuador, a small South American country, is immersed in a deep economical crisis, has changed four governments in the last five years and is currently ranking among the most corrupt countries in the world. Therefore, there is little room for hope.

Yet Cordero stands on that last piece of hope. While Gaviria's appalling films should be considered almost docudramas, because of their extensive use of wild and improvised footage and sound, ‘Rodents' is entirely fiction. This fact allows Cordero to develop the film's subject without any trace of pamphleteer's or social reformer's speech, while giving his theme a treatment entirely free of any effete or wimpy false sympathy for the street hardened characters he depicts.

Based on reality, but reconstructed and rearranged in the mind of an artist, the film becomes a forceful condemnation of the situation it enlightens and must be considered a powerful weapon in the struggle for a better future in his country.

A standing ovation for Sebastián Cordero, a young master.

"Rodents" is a bit different from other movies about Latin American criminals and lowlife in that it shows the interconnections among classes. The sad protagonist, Salvador, is an aimless kid at the bottom edge of the lower middle class; one of his cousins is in the greedy, selfish, stupid bourgeoisie, and his other cousin, the sociopath Angel, is in the "underclass." Like Mario Vargas Llosa's stunning novel, Conversation in the Cathedral, "Rodents" is saying that these classes don't exist separately from each other--the degradation of life in many large cities throughout the world is a product of class interactions. The viewer feels sorry for Salvador, who like the middle class as a whole, is trapped between brutal street criminals and the disgusting rich, caught in a spiral of meaningless violence that he has absolutely no control over. Incidentally, I agree with Ecuadorian reviewers who say this movie is not representative of life in Quito; it's true enough that Ecuadorians have generally remained civil and non-violent, despite the horrible things that corrupt politicians and the IMF (and others)have done to their economy. However, the movie packs a punch and has a lot to say about life in many places beyond Ecuador. A must-see.

rateros, is about a street level hoodlum in modern day quito, Ecuador. this moving cannonball of destruction, intersects with various people's lives, leaving mayhem and chaos in his aftermath. the guy seems to have gone on the wrong path due to personal misfortunes, like the death of his mother and is progressively getting worse. he is getting addicted to smoking cocoa, which is filmed with a gangsta cool, which is hard to beat, and almost makes me want to do the same things too. i can identify with this movie a lot, since i too was once on the wrong path like this. lying and using people came easily to me and it wasn't that i wanted to hurt them or do bad things, it was just the way the day spelled out for me.

rateros, is a lot like train spotting, the British movie about junkies. while it stays true to the emotions and reality of such a lifestyle, one could say that the protagonist is unusually lucky. such a lifestyle of drugs, using people and in this movies case, eventually progressing to killing people, can only be affected for the short term. people who live this way do not live long or live long outside of prisons.

the movie supports an ensemble cast of characters, who play their parts excellently, but angel is the centerpiece. the actor who plays him (Carlos Valencia) gave a virtual tour de force performance. he was very very good and believable down to the blackened nicotine stained lips and whinny insinuating way of street talking. the cinematography is also very good, giving a very good feel of the culture of the burgeoning metropolis, that is quito.

overall the movie is very good and another milestone in the tons of very good cinema coming out of south America, and one of the first which has put Ecuador on the map for me. i highly recommend that you watch it.

I had heard a lot about this ground breaking, acclaimed film about street kids in Ecuador at Film Festivals in Europe and South America in 1999. But, I just got to see it today at the Miami Hispanic Film Festival. Take it from one who's experienced that scene in the crime ridden, cocaine-permeated large capitals of South America...This film- RODENTS, in English is the next most realistic (and much less life-threatening) thing to being in that scene. It's not just the characters themselves, their neighborhoods, their language, their crimes which are so meticulously recreated. The alluring yet potentially lethal high that cocaine in all its forms, especially in smoked form in this film, has never been as faithfully reproduced. "Rodents" main, ex-convict character, and the special effects surrounding his base smoking scenes, are mind boggling. The movie starts with such a scene. After that, it's as if one totally understands what draws the character to continue committing such incredible low, almost sub-human crimes. The high is so intoxicating, even when juxtaposed with graphic sex, that for once, and perhaps the only time in cinema, the poison that particular drug contains is made completely clear. What ensues in "Rodents" in the never-ending quest for that "high" constitutes some of the most realistic portrayals of youth crime, and social class clashes in Latin America film. However, seeing all that, with the almost too real-to-be-true cinematic insight of the addiction which causes these social tragedies, is a unique experience. Not to be missed.

A difficult film to watch, Rateros is a rewarding, harrowing, emotional roller coaster of a movie. Marcos Bustos is Salvador, a poor teenager in-and-out of minor trouble at military school, but overall likable. Enter his inappropriately named cousin, Angel, a man who can fall in a bed of roses and come out smelling like crap. Angel is a junky and immediately proceeds to ruin the lives of Salvador and anyone else he comes into contact with.

As Angel Carlos Valencia gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance that is so believable and anger-inducing I nearly wanted to reach into my television and strangle him myself. This is a slice of life from an impoverished and almost hopeless world. Though extremely poor, Salvador is straddling a place between two worlds as he teeters dangerously towards the wrong one. Although it's evident early on he would like to rid himself, tough guy Angel's cries to Salvador for help work in a revolting passive aggressive way that threatens violence at all times.

Inspiration and hope come from Salvador's understanding girlfriend, Mayra and another cousin the wealthy, sympathetic and beautifully bored, Carolina.

Silent witness to all and symbol of the film's grim realities sits the boy's shared grandma, wheelchair bound and comatose, more dead than alive and helpless to do more than just sit there.

A powerful, sad and thought provoking tale.