La hija del caníbal

I avoided seeing this movie for a long time, simply because I was tired of being let down by bad mexican cinema. After seeing the huge marketing campaign behind it and noticing that it had the same director/writer of Sexo, Pudor Y Lagrimas, I decided to give it a shot. Big mistake, this is a mess of a movie, the plot, the dialogue, the paper thin characters. Not one of the elements that made Sexo, Pudor Y lagrimas translated, the only thing that remained were the preachy monologues and overall pretentiousness.

If you expect the plot in this Mexican pseudo-thriller to make sense, or be suspenseful, you are bound to be disappointed. The crux of this movie are the relationships and mid-life recentering that go on in Lucia's (Cecilia Roth) life. Her husband disappears, and she rushes to find him. Along the way she is befriended by an old ex-rebel communist and a young man who falls in love with her despite her wishes otherwise. These two friends come to take precedence in her life as she realized she doesn't really like her husband, and wants to live her own life. When she eventually tracks down her husband, she wishes him well and they go their separate ways. I didn't dislike the film even despite its weakness. I was interested to see how Lucia discovered herself and grew closer to and pushed away those around her.

This movie is like a veggie burger with eggplant in place of beef, covered in lettuce and tomatoes and sauce. When you first bite in, the first thing you taste is the bun and the lettuce. Then as you chew, you see that there is sauce, tomato and eggplant, but no meat. Try as you might, it's just not the same without meat. It might be not be disappointing if it were packaged a salad between bread, but as a substitute for a burger, it just doesn't satisfy. 5/10

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Wasn't this supposed to be the summer of only dumb sequels for teenagers?

So what a surprise that we have a virtual trilogy of intelligent foreign films about women of a certain age with strong, sexy imaginations and time on their hands to meet up with unexpected strangers, in "Swimming Pool" then "Friday Night (Vendredi Soir)" and now "Lucia, Lucia (La Hija del canibal)."

"Lucia" is unexpectedly the funniest of the three, a delightfully wry black comedy with twists on expectations that the storyteller turns on herself constantly as she bonds in an odd three-some with her neighbors, an elderly ex-revolutionary and a young hunk.

While based on a novel, it seems like a gender/generational response to the Mexican teen-age road movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien," in the classic tradition of women's response songs to hits (as in "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"), complete with a country line dance scene as a relaxing break from political intrigue and marital secrets exposed while Lucia searches for her kidnapped husband -- and herself.

One of the running jokes is how the older generations can still surprise the young 'uns.

Writers are driving me crazy: In `Adaptation' Nicolas Cage was barely sane struggling with his inspiration and incendiary companions, true or otherwise; in `Swimming Pool,' Charlotte Rampling created a plausible fiction of a dangerous female border and Rampling's desire to make real the murders she wrote.

Antonio Serrano's `Lucia, Lucia' is set in Mexico with a children's writer, Lucia (Cecilia Roth from Almodovar's `All about My Mother'), admitting in voiceover her fictions about her life, establishing herself as an unreliable narrator about the kidnapping of her husband, her attempts to recover him, an affair with a younger man, and a friendship with an older man. Initially I was put off by her lies because a mystery needs a reliable narrator, but as I accepted her creative effort to describe the middle-aged crisis through these fictions, I settled into an aesthetic trance that sees clearly the symbolism of each character relating to her changes of life. Her observation that heaven must be a moment of sex frozen in time is one of the interesting insights these varied experiences brought to her.

Involved in the kidnapping is a rebel gang patterned after the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) prominent about 30 years ago in Mexico. This plot to deliver the ransom money to the gang is so complicated that even the playful plots of `Y Tu mama Tambien' and `Amores Perros' seem simple by contrast. The inclusion of a corrupt government in the kidnapping is confusing and certainly adds no allegorical insight given the historically corrupt governments of Mexico.

The Spanish version of this film is called `The Cannibal's Daughter,' a much more daring and figuratively descriptive title for Lucia's consuming life. Actually, her actor father once played a cannibal and mother sees marriage as sharing life with the living dead. It's easy to see why Lucia questions her marriage and warily enters into relationships with the passionate young man and politically-romantic older man. At the least in her story, she is experiencing what the bard predicted when he said of middle age:

`Thou hast nor youth, nor age, But as it were an after-dinner's sleep Dreaming on both.'

In the end, the story turns nicely on the evolution of a soul who accepts life and her place in it as a writer whose imagination helps her find peace. The men may lose her, but she finds herself.

On 30 December, in the airport of Mexico City, the husband of Lucia (Cecilia Roth) vanishes a few minutes before the last call to the flight to Rio de Janerio, where they are going to see the reveillon in Copacabana. Lucia goes to the police to report the disappearance, and back home, she is mainly supported by two neighbors, the seventy years old Félix (Carlos Álvarez-Novoa) and the young man Adrián (Kuno Becker). Together, they look for Lucia's husband, in a journey of friendship, love and self-discovery for Lucia. Alternating the reality and the imagination of the character of Lucia, who is the narrator of the story, "La Hija del Cannibal" is a delightful, intriguing and original tale. The mysterious story is very unpredictable, and includes a tough critics to the corruption of the Mexican government. Cecilia Roth is excellent and very charming, as usual, very well-supported by Carlos Álvarez-Novoa and Kuno Becker. I liked this movie a lot and highly recommended as a very fresh screenplay. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Aos Olhos de Uma Mulher" ("Through the Eyes of a Woman")