De la calle

I saw "De La Calle" (aka, "Streeters) at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it had been touted as a remarkable film with chilling insights into the lives of street kids in Mexico City. It was an engaging enough film, with fairly sympathetic characters and reasonable excitement, but the director's inexperience showed. His plot sometimes dragged, his character were not fully developed, and most of all, he his metaphors hit the viewer over the head. Also, he often moved his camera inexplicably -- it's as if he wanted to make bold statements, as a good director would, but didn't understand how to make those statements. All told, it's an adequate movie, worth a few bucks, but not what it might have been.

This is a film set in present day Mexico City, where the teen aged main characters have little to live for except maybe drugs and sex. The main character is named Rufino, who learns that his father might be alive, and even though he had always been told otherwise, he becomes obsessed with finding him. Near the beginning of the film he comes into some drug money that shouldn't really be his, so he tells his girlfriend Xóchitl that she, her son, and Rufino can get away from the city, perhaps to see the ocean for the first time.

But no one in this film really goes anywhere. The Ferris Wheel that they ride near the beginning of the film is the perfect image, since it goes around and around, but there is no real escape. Everyone is just getting by, living day to day.

The acting by Maya Zapata (Xóchitl) and Luis Fernando Peña (Rufino) is excellent, and the rest of the young cast is also very natural. The camera is mostly handheld and the feel is very realistic and gritty.

The first time director was not at the screening where I saw this at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 4/24/2002, but the SFFS person did read some comments from him, which included the words "open wound." I think that sums up the film, which is worth seeing but is certainly not uplifting.

I saw this film at the LATINO film festival in Hollywood, CA and the experiance was great and the movie was very powerful. Both the director and writer were there after the film and reinforced what was clear throughout the movie that this movie came directly form the heart and nothing would compromise that. Many people in the industry wanted the director to change the morbid ending.

De la Calle is a moving film about the street kids of Mexico City. Through this film we see poverty, drug use and corruption. The main character, Rufino, begins with the film with the dream of leaving the horrors of street life in Mexico City, but gets blind sided with the idea of finding his real father. We see poverty and drug use through the street kids that live under the city. The corruption comes through strongly in the police involvement in the sale of drugs. This is exactly what gets Rufino in trouble, when he steals drug money to fulfill his dream of leaving the city.

This film has a documentary feel, showing "real" street life in Mexico City, although it is a work of fiction. We see the chaotic life of living on the street in any city but what makes this film unique to Mexico City and Mexican culture is the fact that these street kids are a family. Rufino and his friends refer to each other as brothers. Xochitl, Rufino's girlfriend takes care of the younger street kids as a mother, even though she has a son of her own, that she is kept from her because she "can't" take care of him. This idea of family is even stronger during Rufino's relentless search for his real father; many of his brothers ask him why, as to say we are your family. When Rufino is violated towards the end of the film and it is shown to the audience that his attacker is in fact is real father it just reiterates that his true family is with the street kids.

In Mexican film we are living a fatalist era, which is not all that bad and it is a part of our country and our culture, like Amores Perros which is the best known, among others. De la calle is a good film, it goes to the guts of the problem without compromising deeper, which is OK, but there are many more arms to this octopus, there are worst cases.

Very good narrative, good directing, very good editing and the story is... well, average, because if your going to put a story on film, I think it has to go beyond what we already know.

More than a good effort, it's a good movie, but I would do more with the story.