El evangelio de la maravillas
Mexico,
1998, 112 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Arturo Ripstein
- prod
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Jorge Sanchez, Laura Imperiale
- scr
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Paz Alicia Garcíadiego
- cam
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Guillermo Granillo
- editor
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Ximena Cuevas
- cast
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Francisco Rabal, Katy Jurado, Carolina Papaleo, Edward Gurrola, Bruno Bichir, Patricia Reyes Spindola
- source
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IMCINE, Tepic#40 Colonia Roma Sur, Mexico City, 06760 Mexico. FAX: 52-5-564-4187. EMAIL: promint@imcine.gob.mx. WORLD SALES- Christa Saredi World Sales, StaffelstraBe 8, 8045 Zurich, Switzerland. FAX: 41-1-201-1152
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COMMENTS
Arturo Ripstein appeared in person as the 1999 recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award. Paz Alicia Garcíadiego also appeared.
OTHER
Arturo Ripstein claims that his film is tailor-made for the millennium. Loosely based on a true story from the ’70s, the film luridly exposes the life of a religious sect in Mexico preparing for the year 2000. A haven for prostitutes, vagrant teenagers and misfits, it is led by a prophetess who cheats at dominoes and a priest who worships Charlton Heston. Their rituals and dogmas are gleaned from Hollywood biblical epics of the ’50s, their ceremonies a warped combination of medieval processions, cinematic drama and modern decadence. When a Nintendo-obsessed teenager assumes power over the cult, she begins to change the rules, declaring that all men must have sex with her in order for the sect to be saved. There is a hint of Buñuel about the way Divine mixes the sacred with the profane, scarcely surprising considering the Spanish master was one of Ripstein’s mentors. Even with the presence in the cast of a Buñuel icon like Francisco Rabal (and former Hollywood star Katy Jurado), the film is still Ripstein’s personal compendium of his own recurrent themes and obsessions—eccentrics who construct their own world, the destructive pattern of relationships, the designs of fate and the devotion to cinema as the true religion.
FACTOID #384
Henry Fonda attended the SFIFF in 1967 to receive a tribute for his work in classics like The Grapes of Wrath and 12 Angry Men. Daughter Jane showed up in 1975 for a tribute of her own. And her brother Peter made two Festival appearances, one as a guest in 1963 and another to accompany the film Nadja (in which he gleefully portrayed Dr. Van Helsing) in 1995.
