Your Iron Lady

A selection at the Florida Film Festival, Your Iron Lady tells the story of Teresa (Victoria del Rosal), a single mother navigating her recent move to the United States while raising her children the best way she can.

Writer/Director Jorge Xolalpa Jr. based this film off of an autobiographical short story written by his mother, Teresa Ramirez Galan. The film sets its tone perfectly right at the beginning, opening up with a static wide shot (Xolalpa's decision to film in Academy Ratio also helps establish a more intimate experience). A peaceful interaction involving numerous members of the family suddenly erupts into a vicious dispute.

The action within that scene unfolds naturally, which makes the conflict feel real. This is a credit to the performers who made this work, and also Jorge Xolalpa Jr., who keeps this realism going for the entire film, in a style reminiscent of Robert Altman.

Victoria del Rosal shines as Teresa. She can deliver her lines with real emotion and immediacy, but can also speak a thousand words with a single look.

The narrative of the film centers around a specific portion of Teresa's life, as we see her in a turbulent living situation with her sister, dealing with her estranged husband, and ultimately being forced to find her own way and establish a better life for herself and her children.

Some of Teresa's most emotional scenes are when she interacts with her children. Keeping her daughter Jazmin (played wonderfully by Alondra Lara) while she has her own internal struggle between her own rebellious adolescence and not wanting to disappoint her mother. There's a harsh honesty between the two of them, but at no point is Teresa's love for her daughter in doubt. The scene she has with her son as she walks him to school, after finding out other kids were calling him homophobic slurs is touching. On the surface, we see her reassuring her son after he was bullied, but there's an even more powerful subtext - that she'll love him, no matter what.

Your Iron Lady is an example of a simple slice-of-life story told effectively well, from deliberate and strategic camera work, an intimate aspect ratio, to a strong cast who were able to deliver real, natural performances. The talent on display in this film is phenomenal. It's currently circulating on the Festival circuit, and given changes made this year due to COVID-19, it's an easy film to seek out and watch from home.

This movie is so original, no doubt that Jorge Xolalpa Jr. Is an amazing Director, what he did,with the budget he had and the time it took to have a finished product. It just amazing.

Selected at the Florida Film Festival and seeking film award success, 'Your Iron Lady' is written and directed by Jorge Xolalpa Jr., adapting the unpublished book of her mother Teresa Ramirez Galan.

What I can't fathom enough about Your Iron Lady is how poorly it was written. The entire time, it felt like Xolalpa was trying to cram too much of his family's storyline into the whole hour and thirty two minutes, which in numerous occasions, lost track of what this entire movie was supposed to be about. The screenplay, which I was lucky enough to read, comes off very amateur and mundane to say the least. Each scene in the movie felt like a drag and utter mess. There were a lot of scenes in the movie where something important would be going on with the character Teresa and her family, but, you -- as an audience member -- didn't at the slightest most, not feel any sympathy for these characters and their situations at all. The same goes for Teresa's daughters in the story as well. Yes, we understand they came with Teresa in the United States, but the sisters played a drag. A wholesome amount of unnecessary subplots for these supporting characters where you just feel lost the entire time, trying to figure out who's this movie actually about, which sums my purpose to say that each scene is filled with a lot of unnecessary situations that don't make the movie go anywhere. Now determining how many drafts there was for this screenplay, I'd assume it needed a lot more. There's just too many gaps in this movie that need to be filled, which makes the movie drag and drag. Your Iron Lady's story is not enough to make it interesting or even at the most, enough to deliver a great story. What it does is feel like a bore and something we've already watched already, but executed horribly. Your Iron Lady feels more, if anything, like a telenovela series than an adapted movie.

The direction for this movie is very interesting and unattractive to say the least. There's some scenes in this movie, like the one where Teresa is talking long distanced to her son while her daughters watch along in the room, that is very well directed. But for the most part, there was a lot of post production issues in this movie, like the subtitles in the beginning that were rough to see, that should've been fixed before submitting something like this to a film festival, where as a director, you should be picky about little issues like this, especially since this is a movie dedicated to Xolalpa's mother in general. The direction for this biopic is seemingly dry and bland, where there's nothing special to pick from it.

Another issue with this movie is sound production. There's a couple scenes in this movie where the sound is very irrupted, where certain characters could be yelling, which makes the audio sound very unincorporated. Another one would be, again, the subtitles. One big issue with the movie was the wigs these actors had on. It just looked sloppy and completely noticeable where you can figure out they had wigs on and it wasn't their natural hair.

The only bright part of this movie is Victoria del Rosal's performance, which saves this mediocre screenplay from its complete downfall. Del Rosal's performance for this movie is exceptional and very well acted. Not extremely powerful, due to the scripts bland intakes that try to make you feel moved but don't. However, del Rosal is fine and very likable for her performance for the role of Xolalpa's mother Teresa.

Overall, Your Iron Lady is a very stilted story with shoddy direction and a narrative that is none at all interesting or at all important. Whatever the message Xolalpa Jr. is trying to paint for this movie, it drastically fails and is to be blamed on the screenplay for its lacking characteristics of cramming too much into this 1hr. 32min. storyline that feels too rushed, crummy, and sloppy. I believe if Xolalpa took the time and gave this movie a couple more drafts and some actual criticism from different people to shine the light on the cons of this movie, then he could've had something somewhat decent.

Seriously I was able to catch a screening virtually as part of a film festival and it was super difficult because I work and I only had 3 hours to watch it after purchasing my ticket but I have to tell you it was worth it. Latinos don't get represented AT ALL and when they do it is with films like ROMA which is cool but it's not the immigrant experience that a lot of us go through. The film can be slow if you're into big action movies because it is a life drama, but if you pay attention you can see that it was made with love. I cried a lot and I felt like I was watching my mother's life. When Teresa is talking to her daughter in the couch. I had to pause it because it made me very emotional. My mother passed away from Cancer two years ago. How I wish she would had watched this film. I know that it is based on a true story by the directors mom, but I almost feel like he made a film that's based on all our immigrant mothers. This film is must watch. Like I said it can feel slow but its beautiful and very real to many of our live stories.