De la calle
Mexico,
2001, 85 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
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Gerardo Tort
- prod
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Lillian Haugen, Héctor Ortega
- scr
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Marina Stavenhagen
- cam
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Héctor Ortega
- editor
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Juan Carlos Solorzano, Carlos Hagennan
- mus
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Diego Herrera
- cast
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Luis Fernando Peña, Maya Zapata, Armando Hernandez, Mario Zaragoza, Alfonso Figueroa, Abel Woolrich
- source
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IMCINE Relacion Festival, Insurgentes Sur Col. Del Valle, D.F. 03100, Mexico. FAX: 52-55-5448-5380. EMAIL: promint@imcine.gob.mx
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COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender.
OTHER
Gerardo Tort’s Streeters offers us a candid and often hyperreal depiction of survival on (and under) the streets of Mexico City. Rufino, a street kid working odd jobs, promises to take his girlfriend Xochitl and her son away from their blanched, hopeless existence. Selling a bag of cocaine stolen from a crooked cop, Rufino’s plan is to take the money and flee with them to the ocean. But when he hears a rumor that his father is still alive, Rufino becomes obsessed with finding him and thus disentangling himself from the mystery of where he came from, so he can become who he imagines himself to be. This process of discovery reveals the extent of corruption, betrayal and desperation familiar on these meanest of streets. With each decision to prolong their flight, Rufino (Luis Fernando Peña in a career-making performance) and Xohitl become further mired in their underworld until escape becomes impossible. Plying the same territory as Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados and Alejandro González Iñarritu’s Amores Perros, this remarkable debut feature (adapted from a renowned stage play by Jesús González Dávila) is brutal in its honesty and execution, its handheld, in-your-face camera and desaturated colors lending Mexico’s urban decay a palpable dimension.
FACTOID #73
James Wong Howe was the first cinematographer to receive a tribute at the Festival, October 19, 1974. The legendary lenser photographed such classics as The Thin Man, Pursued, Sweet Smell of Success and Hud.
