La perdición de los hombres

Arturo Ripstein is one of the most respected veteran filmmakers of México. He belongs to the generation responsible for the so-called "new Mexican cinema" in the 1970s, that produced some remarkable works, as Paul Leduc's «Reed, México insurgente» and Felipe Cazals' «Canoa». Ripstein was one of the first to gain recognition with his very good B&W revisionist western «Tiempo de morir» (1965), written directly for the screen by Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. It rained a lot between this movie and his 1999 screen version of García Márquez's novel «El coronel no tiene quien le escriba». In the meantime, he married screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego, and since their first collaboration, «El imperio de la fortuna» (1986, from Juan Rulfo's tale «El gallo de oro»), Ripstein's cinematic world has become overblown, slow, morbid, grotesque and misanthropic.

One cannot completely blame Garciadiego for this, but she surely has a lot to do with it. «Profundo carmesí» (1996), their retelling of the story told in «The Honeymoon Killers,» is a good example of this couple's peculiar collaborations. In «La perdición de los hombres», they once again enter the world of misery, though the characters are not precisely outcasts as the fat nurse and her gigolo lover in «Profundo carmesí». This time Ripstein returns to his early free-style -it's even in black and white-, as he tells the stories of normal people, who choose weird solutions to their predicaments and whose dreams occupy the same space and tone as their daily actions on the screen. Garciadiego rarely paints a "nice" male character, so here we find not only one but three machos, who play baseball and believe that man's downfall is personified in women (in fact, the movie's title is a verse from a popular ranchera that goes "The ruination of men / Are the damned women"). Garciadiego built her story "a la Pulp Fiction", with the first act seen after we have witnessed the resolution, so the interest is substained as we wait to know why two of the guys kill the man known as the "King of the Baseball Diamond", while his widow fights for his dead body with his younger and prettier lover.

I cannot deny it is funny. Sometimes very funny, mainly because Patricia Reyes Spíndola (as Axe Face, the widow, an underrated fine actress that Ripstein turned into a star when she played lesbian singer Lucha Reyes in his sordid 1994 biopic «La reina de la noche») is such a great performer, that she carries along most of the film. On the other hand, Ripstein uses long takes by two virtuoso cameramen who follow the players dynamically in the tightest spaces. For me, who dislikes a few Ripstein/Garciadiego films («La reina...», «Así es la vida», «Principio y fin», «El evangelio de las maravillas») and avoided «El coronel...», this was a sort of reconciliation with their cinema.

Well it would be an odd pairing to watch with the old musical (which I'm not sure if I ever saw it).

In both cases, it seems baseball has not been very good to the key characters.

Also both films have singing in 'em, well this one very little but the title is a cancion that may mark several sections. I get that this is supposed to be a comedy, and a black one at that. Well a black and white one, which made the film feel a lot older than 2000.

At one point I was confused as it seemed like one of the leadoff hitters 8 children I thought was holding a smart phone, when I thought maybe the time frame was the 50's? Later though we find out it is a little handheld electronic game, and this is more modern than I thought.

And yet the gags feel pretty old, and honestly poor. Or at least playing about the pobrecitos.

Anyways back to the slugger aka Minimal Man aka the lead off hitter, he's got two misses. And they have a cat fight over his corpse, in the jail/coroner/tamale palace?

I think the humor is sort of trying to play about what is civilized on the surface but really so desperate beneath. The tale of the uncle and his ojo gets told twice.

Feels like there were maybe 8 lengthy scenes, off single camera and if not confined in a cell or hovel, then on a dusty path towards that hovel.

If I blur my eyes, I can almost make this a Charlie Brown story in black and white and Spanish. Probably there is more going on here since it is Ripstein, but between the two misses and the bad teammates, that added up to strike three for me.

Of course, I am both damned and a yankee....

As the film opens, we see two men preparing to ambush a third man, who is walking along a trail with a wheelbarrow. They kill him, take him to a house, and steal his fancy boots. Later we are introduced to the victim's widow and his girlfriend.

To me, the film started slow, and didn't become very interesting until at least halfway through, although it was often funny throughout. Near the end we see the opening scene again, with context to understand better what was really happening.

This dark comedy is filmed in a dusty looking black and white. It's possible that if I had been less tired that I would have liked it better, but as it stands I can only give it a very marginal recommendation. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 4/30/2002.