Principio y fin
Mexico,
1993, 183 min
Shown in 1994 / 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Arturo Ripstein
- prod
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Alfredo Ripstein
- scr
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Paz Alicia Garcíadiego
- cam
-
Claudio Rocha
- editor
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Rafael Castanedo
- cast
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Ernesto Laguardia, Julieta Egurrola, Bruno Bicher, Lucía Muñoz, Alberto Estrella
- source
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IMCINE, Tepic #40, Mexico D.F, 06760 Mexico. FAX: 52-5-564-4187. EMAIL: prominent@imcine.gob.mx
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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 based this compelling family drama on the novel by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, but transposed the story of the interplay between hope and poverty to a Mexico of overwhelming social inequality. The mother, Ignacia, at once tender and cruel, knows that to survive in this world you must be corrupt and opportunistic, put up a false front of success and be willing to destroy others. The film relates the intertwined lives of the four children Ignacia has to support when her husband’s death leaves the family destitute. Her survival strategy is to demand that three of the children sacrifice their own desires to put the fourth through college. But fate crushes their hopes, and the children turn to prostitution, crime and suicide. The family, instead of becoming the last redoubt of civilization, is revealed as the destroyer of dreams. Again working with screenwriter Paz Alicia Garcíadiego, Ripstein deconstructs Motherhood, the Family, Bourgeois Dreams and even Mexican Melodrama with his highly artificial and distanced use of pathos. This powerful work of cinematic art is a painful reflection on humanity, evoking the work of such filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos.
FACTOID #162
The Stand-In (1985), Nina Takes a Lover (1994), Dream for an Insomniac (1996), Dream with the Fishes (1997), Teknolust (2002) and Dopamine(2003) were not only screened at Festival but were also shot in San Francisco.
