La mujer del puerto
Mexico,
1991, 110 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Arturo Ripstein
- prod
-
Allen Persselin, Michael Donnelly
- scr
-
Paz Alicia Garcíadiego
- cam
-
Angel Goded
- editor
-
Carlos Puente
- cast
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Patricia Reyes Spindola, Alejandro Parodi, Evangelina Sosa, Damian Alcazar, Ernesto Yáñez
- source
-
Prime Films, Emilio Vargas 10 1 * C, 28043 Madrid, Spain. FAX: 34-91-413-0772
-
COMMENTS
Arturo Ripstein appeared in person as the 1999 recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award. Paz Alicia Garcíadiego also appeared.
OTHER
In Woman of the Port, Ripstein taps into one of the most profound and disturbing taboos of our time—incest. Working from Guy de Maupassant’s story "Le Port" and referring to the classic 1933 Mexican film adaptation which scandalized audiences at the the time, he creates an unflinching and unforgettably powerful portrait of seedy port life, dimly lit brothels, pimps and corruption. Three characters tell three related stories of struggle and poverty, of destiny and the fight to resist it. The man, “El Marro,” a weaver of impossible dreams, is a sailor who has abandoned ship and taken refuge in a brothel; Perla is a girl of angelic beauty, the star of the whorehouse; Tomasa is a desperate older prostitute, running from loneliness and old age, who knows that both El Marro and Perla are her children. The characters narrate their own chapters, their stories rearranging and inverting the events described by the other two, with no single episode containing the entire story. Each part, though, is linked by a common view of poverty—and the fantasy world the human imagination creates to escape it. Offering a unique solution to human tragedy, Ripstein has composed a rare and startling work of sordid beauty and painful survival.
FACTOID #75
Italian screen siren and ’60s sex symbol Sophia Loren appeared in two films screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Ettore Scola’s A Special Day in 1977 and Francesco Rosi’s More Than a Miracle in 1981.
