Asi es la vida
Mexico,
2000, 98 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
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Arturo Ripstein
- prod
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Laura Imperiale, Jorge Sánchez, Alvaro Garnica
- scr
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Paz Alicia Garcíadiego, Arturo Ripstein
- cam
-
Guillermo Granillo
- editor
-
Carlos Puente
- mus
-
David Mansfield, Leoncio Lara
- cast
-
Arcelia Ramírez, Luis Felipe Tovar, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Ernesto Yáñez, Francesca Guillén
- source
-
Filmania, Atletas 2, Col. Country Club, Edif. Pedro Infante, 04220 Mexico DF, Mexico. FAX: 52-5-544-5425. WORLD - Christa Saredi, Gasometerstrasse 9, CH 8005 Zürich, Switzerland. FAX: 44-1-274-1099. EMAIL: saredifilm@swissonline.ch
-
COMMENTS
Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garcíadiego appeared in person.
OTHER
Working with digital video for the first time in his storied career, Mexican director Arturo Ripstein (1999 Akira Kurosawa Award recipient) gives the oft-told Medea myth a contemporary updating. In a decrepit Mexican neighborhood lives Julia, who uses alternative healing practices to tend to the poor. One day, her husband leaves her for the young daughter of their sleazy landlord; what’s worse, he takes their children. Facing a life alone, Julia falls apart. When the landlord later arrives with an eviction notice, her thoughts turn to vengeance, and to the only weapons she knows can truly wound her husband: their children. Inventively stylized, the film smoothly places the elements of Greek tragedy into modern Mexico, even creating a chorus from a TV variety show, replete with a somber weather reporter and a bolero trio singing songs of tragic love. Ripstein’s longtime partner Garcíadiego provides the well-crafted, pointed dialogue, while cinematographer Granillo gleefully unleashes the freedom of digital video, shooting every scene in one take with a handheld camera to make the most of the maneuverability and spontaneity it provides. While the camerawork may be new, Such Is Life is essential Ripstein, with his baroque sensibilities and themes (bad love, worse destiny) as exceptional and gorgeously presented as ever.
FACTOID #202
At the 1978 SFIFF, Paul Mazursky received a tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently, the facility’s janitorial staff had not been notified, and the padlocked doors of the Palace had to be cut so the filmmaker and his audience could be let in.
