La última mirada (2006)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Patricia Arriaga-Jordán

Writer:

Patricia Arriaga-Jordán (written by)

Release Date:

30 March 2007 (Mexico)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

If you could choose... what would be the last thing you ever saw?

Plot:

A drama centered on the relationship between a painter who's losing his sight and a maid in a Mexican brothel. |

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

Sergi Mateu	...	Homero
Marisol Centeno	...	Mei
Alexa Damián	...	Ikerne
Arcelia Ramírez	...	Hermana Irma
Gina Morett	...	Madame Lin Lin
Enrique Arreola	...	Nazario
Samuel Gallegos	...	Refugio
Martin LaSalle	...	Don Jaime
Pablo Astiazarán	...	Chava
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jorge Becerra	...	Noe
Mary Paz Mata

Also Known As:

The Last Gaze (USA) (festival title)

Runtime:

Mexico:123 min

Country:

Mexico

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Filming Locations:

Mexico

Company:

Nao Films

Gorgeous Mexican film on art, desire and entrapment

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I saw this beautiful film at the Chicago Film festival and I highly, highly recommend it. First off, it is a deeply moving story that revolves around two characters in a small Mexican town: Mei - a young girl who works as a maid in a brothel - and Homero - a painter losing his sight who can only see the color red for a few more weeks before he is about to go completely blind. The story focuses on the contingency and chance crossings of their paths before they actually meet in the final scene, which is ABSOLUTELY brilliant. But more importantly, the movie's exploration of the two characters' subjective, fantasy relations to an impending, terrifying entrapment (blindness and servitude respectively) is unparalleled in Mexican cinema. Second, the movie is visually lush and gorgeous and is a constant delight to watch. But perhaps most importantly, and of special significance to anyone used to watching Mexican cinema over the past decades, Arriaga's movie is, I would say, the ONLY mature Mexican cinematographic inquiry into the relation between art and sexuality I have seen over the past years. It sheds the crass sexual clichés to which Mexican audiences have become accustomed, and takes an honest, compassionate look at the nature of desire - particularly, and uniquely, the growing feminine sexuality of the adolescent Mei as she comes to terms with her own desires, surrounded by a world where sex seems to be some kind of ritualized violence. Besides the many other things that make this film a profound pleasure to watch, for this alone, as a Mexican moviegoer, one gives thanks.