De la calle

The story of the movie talks about the poor people from Mexico city... but what I can only see in the movie is dirty people... having a kind of life... I guess that the Director of this movie was not so informed by the context about the story. The actors where OK, but there are movies from Mexico that are much better than this. I remember the movie Black and White and is a bit similar... just that this Mexican movie is with garbage and pollution.

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.

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.

As a first-time reviewer, I'll do my best: This movie gently warmed my heart, then tore it out. Almost documentary in style and realism, I was lost immediately in the story. Reminiscent of "Amores Perros," and, more distantly, of "Y Tu Mama, Tambien," this is a tale of forgotten vagabonds in Mexico City, their loves and hopes and desperate acts. Although fictional, you know these lives exist, and that realization is almost too horrible to comprehend. I cried. Don't let this deter you, though. Wait until you're in a pensive mood, then watch. Hopefully you'll be a better person after. True art.

Director, Gerardo Tort develops a raw human portrait of today's urban slum. "De la Calle" literally translated means "Of the Streets", and suitably so as Tort deals with one of the most disturbing and complex issues: Children living on the streets of Mexico City.

The storyline of two teenagers, Rufino and Xochitl, whose desire is to escape the cruel lifestyle of the streets, is the vehicle used to tour the lives of a marginalized people and experience a glimpse of their ruthless reality. As it seems that there is no possible form of social mobility, the viewer is intrigued by Rufino's proposal of relocating and beginning a new life. This notion is paused by the discovery that Rufino's father might be alive. Their circumstances become more inconceivable as the film progresses.

Tort uses a hand-held camera to take the viewer to undesirable real places, otherwise unknown to the outsider. His use of lighting techniques, the stark contrast between light and dark, symbolizes the extreme disparity of the social economic classes that persist in Mexico. Tort also uses this minimal lighting to convey other critical issues of a Latin American nation: social immobility, corruption at different levels in society, family violence, drugs, rape, and poverty.

"De la Calle" is the child of Tort's original theatrical play, created more than a decade ago to raise awareness about social conditions in the heart of Mexico City. Tort was unable to continue showing the play due to restrictions imposed by authorities. Tort takes a risk by continuing this play as a motion picture. He portrays the painful life of a marginalized people as a form of art, unmasking core issues of the homeless, parent-less, and broken. Thus, Tort inspires others to rise up against the vicious cycles of social injustices.