Latest / The Bechdel Cast / La Llorona (2019) with Vanessa Guerrero

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La Llorona (2019) with Vanessa Guerrero · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: changing it with the Bechdel cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Ooh, an intro for this, Jamie. I don't really have anything.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: I can teach you how to say hello in Kakichel.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, hell yeah. Okay, let's do it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Oots a witch.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Oops, a witch.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Oops, a witch.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: That's enough.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: We did it?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We did it. Yay.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bechdel cast. Hola.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Bienvenidos.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Welcome.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: We are the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is the show
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: where we take your favorite movies and talk about them
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: from an intersectional feminist lens. Using the Bechdel test as
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a jumping off point. But Caitlin, what is that?
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'll tell you. It is a media metric created
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: by a friend of the pod, Alison Bechdel.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Our best friend, of course. And there are many different
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: versions of the test. The one that we use is
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: they speak to each other? And is their conversation about
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: something other than a male? We like it when it's
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: narratively meaningful conversation and not just throwaway dialogue. The movie
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: we're talking about today, first of all, very excited to
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: get into it.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And also, I mean, Bechdel's test, not a problem.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Not a problem.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Not a problem.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And also so many bigger conversations to have.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I was like, let's just get it out of the way.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: It passes. Yeah.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But there's so much more to talk about. And we
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: have an incredible returning guest. What is, is this maybe
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: appearance four or five?
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: It is six. Six?
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  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were just counting off mic.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: She is a writer, comedian, formerly of G4. And you
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: remember her from our episodes on Raw, from Dusk Till Dawn,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Atomic Blonde, Bound, and Made in Manhattan. Never forget. it's
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Vanessa Guerrero.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yay that's the episode where Jamie gave me a four loco.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yes oh my gosh were we ever so young.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Back when my body could still process something like that.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh welcome back I I feel like the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: gosh I forgot about the bound episode I think about
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I think about the raw episode often that was a
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: life changer for me oh.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: My gosh I yeah same Today's movie, so we're talking
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: about La Llorona from 2019, not to be confused with
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: another 2019 movie called The Curse of La Llorona. I,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: oh my God, I was just telling everyone off mic
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: listeners that I had a dream.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I watched the wrong movie and I really woke up
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: feeling it in my whole body, horrifying. Has anyone seen
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: The Curse of La Llorona?
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: No. No. Yes. My parents have. Okay.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I watched it while I was prepping for this episode
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: because I was curious. And I have some things to
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: say about it, which I'll share later. Interesting. Yeah. But yeah, no,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: today's movie is La Llorona, a Guatemalan production from writer-director
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Jairo Bustamante.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Yes. Vanessa.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Vanessa.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Tell us about your relationship to this movie, and then
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: if you have any sort of relationship to the folkloric
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: figure of La Llorona.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I have a big relationship with this movie.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I've written about it before. I have forced my entire
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: family to watch it, to rave reviews. The movie is
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: based off of something that actually happened with Guatemalan dictator
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Efrain Rios Montt. My... My mother, grandmother went through it
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: and hearing the stories of what it was like at
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: the time. And I actually just found out literally today
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: a plot point of the movie is people being disappeared
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: by the government. My grandmother's stepfather was a revolutionary at
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: the time and he disappeared without a trace.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: Yes. Tomás Guerrero. No relation to the Guerreros on my
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: side of the family, just a coincidence. But because of that,
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: I have a really intense relationship with this movie because
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: it takes a story from my childhood that usually was
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: told from the lens of like a traitor that like
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: willingly slept with a colonizer. Because that's usually how the
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Yoruna story is told. A woman hooked up the colonizer
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  Speaker 3: and then he left her and then she drowned the kids.
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  Speaker 3: and turned it on its head into a story of, like,
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  Speaker 3: indigenous revenge. And not only that, but it's, like, so well-researched.
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  Speaker 3: One of the consultants is Rigoberta Menchú, and she's even
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: in the courtroom scene. Oh, wow.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Yes. She's one of the Maya women sitting in the
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: background in the courtroom scene. That's her cameo. And you
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: get so few Guatemalan productions. Like, I have uncles that
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: even made, like, movies in Guatemala, except they were, like,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Blue Demon and the Seven Mummies. Awesome. Which is great.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Still great.
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  Speaker 1: It still rocks.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: It still rocks.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Should we cover that on the podcast?
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You can only watch it on a really shitty
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: YouTube upload.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you were Blue Demon and the Seven
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Mummies nepotism. What a lore drop.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: It's so rare that we get Guatemalan productions, so something
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  Speaker 3: of this caliber was huge for us.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was in the festival rotation.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: It got nominated for an Academy Award.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And it's a terrific movie, so I understand why. Jamie,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: what about you? What's your relationship, if any?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: This was my first viewing. It is a classic Vanessa
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Guerrero brings a movie on I've never seen and it
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: changes my life kind of situation. I think this is
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: maybe the third or fourth time that's happened. Raw, Bound,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and now La Llorona. Yeah, I was aware of the myth.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't aware of all the permutations of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the myth. I enjoyed learning all the different versions of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the myth. And knowing, because I was aware of a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: similar version of the myth that you were, Vanessa. And
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: so going into this, I was like, okay. what's he
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: going to do with this? What's he going to do
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: with it? And I was so, I mean, I'm very
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: excited to get into it. I think this movie does,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it's like one of the best elevated horror movies I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: think I've seen in a very long time. And just
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the way that it turns the myth on its head.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And I mean, it just, I don't know. I'm very
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: excited to get into it. This was my first movie
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of his. This was my first viewing, excited to learn
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: more about Bustamante's work. Caitlin, what about you?
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: I had never seen it before either. And I would
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: say this was my first time meaningfully engaging with any
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: media about La Llorona folklore. I was familiar with her
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: as a folkloric figure, but I hadn't watched any movies
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: or engaged with any other media about her. So I
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: wasn't sure what to expect. I watched this movie, loved it,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: then watched The Curse of La Llorona, didn't love it.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: And then I watched this movie again. And that was
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: after I had done more research about the history of
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: the genocide in Guatemala.
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  Speaker 1: Which, as with many, many genocides that the U.S. is
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  Speaker 1: an integral part of, I did not learn about in
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  Speaker 1: school in any meaningful way.
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  Speaker 2: I think maybe it.
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  Speaker 1: Was touched on, but it was, I mean, particularly for
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: listeners who also do not really know very much about it.
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  Speaker 1: We'll talk about it, obviously, at length in this episode.
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  Speaker 1: But this genocide continued into most of our lifetimes, into
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  Speaker 1: the 90s. It's one of the many times of U.S.
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  Speaker 3: Involvement just fucking shit up in Guatemala. Because then we
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: also have the United Fruit Co. when they destabilized our economy.
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  Speaker 3: And then after they kicked out the doctor that was
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: experimenting on the Tuskegee Airmen, he experimented on Guatemalans. The U.S.
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  Speaker 3: loves to meddle in our shit.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, it's only a hop, skip and a
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: jump to find out Israel also involved. So really the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: whole genocidal axis of evil. Yeah, we'll cover this in
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: more depth in this episode. But just the way that
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: it works in this movie so effortlessly. Obviously this movie
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: came out years later, but it reminded me in terms
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of the eeriness of the zone of interest a little bit.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: In terms of setting and rich evil people ignoring evil.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: suffering people just outside their doors. And I just, I'm
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: very excited to talk about it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Same.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Should we take a quick break and then come
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: back for the recap?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: And we're back. And here is the recap for La Llorona. First,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: we will place a content warning here for genocidal violence.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: We meet a man named General Enrique Monteverde, played by
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Julio Diaz. We will come to learn that he is
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: a powerful, wealthy, former dictator of Guatemala. He is discussing
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: an upcoming trial with some other men, though we're not
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: yet sure what it's about. We meet Monteverde's family, his
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: wife Carmen, played by Margarita Canafique, their daughter Natalia, Sabrina
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: de la Hoz, and Natalia's daughter, Sarah, who seems to
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: be about 12 years old, I think. And then we
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: also meet some of Monteverde's staff of workers in his house,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: housekeepers and the like. One of them is Valeriana, played
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: by Maria Talon. It's worth noting that Monteverde and his
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: family are white and And most, if not all, of
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: the workers are indigenous, specifically Mayan Ixchil, and they speak, oh,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: let me see if I can pronounce this.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: A lot of Mayan words are really, really difficult because
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: they are sounds we do not make anymore. Like we
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: have city names that are like, ooh, I got to
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: take a quick head start before that one. Like Huehuetenango. Yes.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I struggle a bit. Anyway, one night Monteverde wakes
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: up to what sounds like a woman crying. He also
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: hears water running in the bathroom because the bathtub is
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: randomly running. We'll put a little pin in that, some
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: water motifs. He grabs a gun from his arsenal and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: starts kind of snooping around the house to investigate. He
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: almost accidentally shoots his wife Carmen. The workers come running.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Everyone's freaking out.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: He stays shooting his family.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And I was, this isn't a criticism, but I was like,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: thankfully he has apparently terrible aim. He rarely seems to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: connect even at close range.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But he stays shooting the women in his family.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: He really does.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And he says, I shot a gun because I heard
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: a woman crying.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Natural response.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Reasonable response.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: A woman crying. Shoot her. Yeah.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: No one else in the house, however, heard this woman crying.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: And so there's mention of him getting old. Maybe he
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: has dementia. Then we cut to the trial that he
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: was preparing for. During the trial, a Mayan woman is
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: testifying that Monteverde's soldiers attacked, raped, brutalized, and killed many
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: members of her community. And we pieced together that Monteverde
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: is on trial for committing a genocide in the early 1980s,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: one that seemed to specifically target indigenous people, where one
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: third of the Mayan Ischial population in Guatemala were murdered,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: and 38% of those victims were children under the age
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: of 12. This is also what happened in real Guatemalan history,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: which again, we'll get into. So that's what he's on
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: trial for. The defense claims that Monteverde's army only attacked
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: guerrilla fighters, that no civilians were killed, and that no
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: particular race, ethnicity, or religious group were targeted. And then
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Monteverde pleads not guilty. The court, however, finds him guilty
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: of committing a genocide. In the aftermath of this verdict,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Monteverde has a medical emergency and is taken to the
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: hospital where his family discusses the outcome. His daughter Natalia
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: expresses that she believes the survivors of the genocide who
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: testified against her father, but Carmen thinks that's outrageous and
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: She believes this is all false and that those women
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: who testified were paid to lie.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I believe when they interview the final person testifying, it's
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: like 82. There are so many women who appear to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: testify at this.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, the 82nd person.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Then we find out that the constitutional court has annulled
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: the trial and overturned the verdict of Monteverde being guilty
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: of committing a genocide. So he is able to return
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: home to the dismay of hundreds of people who are
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: outside of his home protesting the impunity of it all.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: He looks out into the crowd of protesters and sees
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: a young Mayan woman who is ominously staring at him.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And she turns out to be the new maid, since
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: most of Monteverde's other workers quit, aside from the head housekeeper, Valeriana,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and a guy named Latona, who is Monteverde's bodyguard, I think.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: This new maid is Alma, played by Maria Mercedes Caroy,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: who came from the same village that Valeriana is from.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So that's how she got the job. or so we
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: are led to believe. As soon as Alma arrives, strange
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: things start happening. Water faucets randomly turn on. She has
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a loose frog that she's carrying around. She's always submerging
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: her face in water and encouraging Natalia's daughter, Sarah, to
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: do the same thing, saying that she's teaching Sarah to
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: hold her breath and Sarah takes a liking to Alma
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: and relays to her mom that Alma mentioned that she
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: had two children. But they died. And we'll put a
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: pin in that. By the way, there is still a
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: large group of protesters outside of Monteverde's house. And it
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: seems like they're there like 24-7.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: One of my favorite details.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: They never leave.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: It's such a good thing in sound design that there's
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: always just the hum of angry protesters in the background.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Yes. A good reminder, as if we needed it, that
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: protest works everywhere. you will drive your oppressor out of
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: their mind.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: But yeah, the sound design in this movie is fucking incredible.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, audio, visually, like everything about this movie is awesome.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Anyway, so the protesters are there at all hours. And
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: so it's too dangerous for the family to leave. And
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: so they're all confined to the house for Not sure
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: exactly how long, days, maybe weeks. One night, Monteverde notices
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Alma taking a spooky midnight swim. Then he follows her
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: into the staff living quarters where Alma is naked and
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: washing her dress in the overflowing bathtub. So there's water
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: all over the floor. The family finds Monteverde watching her
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: and he has an erection. So there's another like, what
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the hell is this old man doing kind of freak
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: out moment. Then Carmen tells Natalia that, that throughout their marriage,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: her husband always had a habit of going after indigenous
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: women in a predatory, fetishizing way. And then she reveals
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: that she thinks that Monteverde is Valeriana's father. making valeriana
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: natalia's half-sister meanwhile the family being confined to the house
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: is taking a toll on various family members health monteverde
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: has bronchitis and needs an oxygen tank to help him
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: breathe carmen develops conjunctivitis.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: They have the jk rowling black mold oh yes situation.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah that happens a little later um Before that, Carmen
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: starts having a series of nightmares where she is in
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: a rural area with two small children. And she seems
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: to be in either the middle of the genocide or
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: some similar brutal attack. But she's having to flee and
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: protect her children and different things during these nightmares. Meanwhile,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the protesters are still outside, but they've gone quiet now,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: and they're just staring at the house. It's very eerie.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: This is when Monteverde finds what looks like mold on
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the wall behind a bed frame. Valeriana says it's black magic,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: and she performs a Mayan cleansing ritual on him. Then
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: while she and Alma are scrubbing the mold, Valeriana is like,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: So I talked to the people in the village and
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: none of them know who you are. So who are
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: you and where are you really from? And Alma says
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: that she's from the deepest part of the mountain near
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the water and near a military base and that she
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: was there until the killings began. But remember, that was
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: in 1982 and the movie takes place in 2019. 2019
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: but Alma doesn't look to be any older than like
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: 25 so the math ain't quite mathing and Valeriana is
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: like wait a minute how old are you and Alma
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: says that she doesn't remember and then one night Latona
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the bodyguard guy wakes up to the sound of a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: woman crying so he grabs a gun and starts searching
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the house and discovers two young children perhaps these are
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Alma's dead children and Meanwhile, Natalia's daughter, Sarah, is tiptoeing around.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: She goes into Monteverde's room, disconnects his oxygen tank, goes
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: outside with it, and kind of walks into the pool
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: with it. Monteverde wakes up, realizes that something is wrong,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: goes outside with his gun. He sees Alma submerge herself
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: in the pool, and he shoots her, but again, it's
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: actually Sarah who he shoots, so... shooting another family member.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: He grazes her arm, but she's okay. Carmen, Natalia, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Valeriana come running. They manage to get the gun away
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: from Monteverde and sedate him. And then they see a
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: bunch of people, children and adults, all indigenous, standing on
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: their lawn. The implication is that they are the ghosts
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: or spirits of the people who were killed in the genocide.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: And so Valeriana does another ritual with candles. She's calling
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: upon her ancestors to protect her Carmen, Natalia, and Sarah
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: saying that whatever Monteverde did, we had nothing to do
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: with it. We're innocent. So don't harm us. Then Carmen
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: goes into a trance state and starts having a kind
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: of dreamlike vision, similar to her recent nightmares. where again,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: she is being brutalized by soldiers. The two small children
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: are there with her again. And it's clear that Carmen
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: is there in place of Alma. What we're seeing is
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: what happened to Alma. Carmen then watches the soldiers drown
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: the two children. And then we get a reveal that
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Monteverde is there ordering these killings. And then he shoots
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: and kills Alma. And then Carmen responds by grabbing Monteverde
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: and strangling him. And then we cut back to the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: house and we see that Carmen has strangled her husband
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: to death. A funeral is held. A man attending the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: funeral goes into the restroom. This is, I think, a
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: military general, an associate of Monteverde. And he hears a
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: woman crying as the bathroom floor starts flooding with water.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: And we get the sense that Alma, or La Llorona,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: is going to haunt and kill all of the people
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: responsible for the genocide. The end.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: And then it ends with the song Llorona by Chabela Vargas,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: but it's in this haunting key. Yeah, yes. Played with
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Guatemalan marimba, which I had when I was a child
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: and I was very bad at. Oh, wow.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful instrument. You know, I love it. Maybe
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: that would add to the eeriness of the ending is
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a poorly executed marimba.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Child play.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the movie.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, so much to discuss with this movie. Vanessa, is
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: there anything jumping out to you? Where would you like
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to start?
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: I would definitely like to start with one thing this
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: movie portrays is how aware Guatemalans, both mestizo and indigenous,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: were of the genocides as they were happening. It portrays
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: the fact that If you're Guatemalan, you're angry about this,
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: whether you're indigenous or not. This is like a grave
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: injustice that has happened. And I asked my mother and
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: grandmother what it was like at the time. Like, did
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: you know what was happening? Like what information was being
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: fed to you? And they were like, we were aware,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: but we were also like threatened if we intervened. Like
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: if you said something, it wasn't just you that was
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: being threatened. It was your entire family. Like my mom
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: has a memory of intervening when some people, some mestizo
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: people were beating up an indigenous guy. And my mom
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: intervened because she's freakishly strong. She's been an athlete her
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: whole life. And she remembers as soon as making shushu
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: is okay. sprinting home because she was like, if someone
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: sees that I did something like it's going to be
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: all of us. And the propaganda was as such that
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: when Rios Montt was up for reelection, there were like
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: little jingles of Guatemalan children in the street being like,
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: my mommy's voting for Rios and my daddy's voting for Rios.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: And if I could, I would too. And it didn't
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: work for the second reelection because by that point, Guatemalans
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: were fucking pissed.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Well, and he got overthrown in a coup, right? Like
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: he didn't even make it to an election. That is
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: all very fascinating.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the history connected to this film, I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: feel not well-versed enough in it. So I apologize to
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: our listeners for not having enough knowledge about it. But
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: what I do know is that, again, this was a genocide,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: an indigenous genocide that went on for decades. And also
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that because we are seeing so many
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: historic parallels, because genocides tend to work in the same
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: way and gaslight people, people and erase history in much
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the same way that yes, Mont is behind this, but
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: you cannot do this without the support of, of other
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: genocidal powers.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And so there's, I mean, there's no shortage of writing
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and it's been, you know, well documented how involved the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: CIA particular was in, And one thing this movie does
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: so well is show these different shades of complicity within
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: this home where, you know, very obviously you have the perpetrator,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you have Enrique, but you also have the ways that
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Carmen is party to this and the way that she
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: has to constantly delude herself into to her own detriment
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: as well. Not that that barely matters, but like, and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: how his daughter is complicit, but also questioning. And his granddaughter,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: even more, I mean, it's just, it is a fascinating
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: kind of portrayal of the ways that a family with
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: this kind of power needs to dehumanize the people they
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: profit from massacring. Like it's, yeah.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to get more into that. I'm wondering if
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: it makes sense to go over a brief history as
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: it relates to the events of the movie slash the
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: things that the movie is referencing. I've compiled a small
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: section here. Vanessa, feel free to jump in if I'm
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: missing anything or getting anything wrong.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Because I am by no means an expert on this.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: But basically, the character in the movie, Enrique Monteverde, as
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: you said, is based on Efrain Rios Montt, who was
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the president slash dictator of Guatemala from 1982 to 83.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: He was a career army officer who became the leader
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: of the country when a group of military officers led
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: a coup in 1982 against the then president, Romeo Lucas Garcia,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: and then they installed Rios Montt as a military dictator.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: This was happening kind of smack in the middle of
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: the Guatemalan Civil War, which lasted from 1960 to 96,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: as we said, it was a war fought between the
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: government and leftist revolutionaries, primarily over land distribution because wealthy
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: white European descended Guatemalans, as well as companies like the
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: United Fruit Company, like you mentioned, Vanessa, stole land from
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: indigenous people.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Excellent book about it, by the way, called Bitter Fruit.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Ooh, okay, good to know.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, we'll link that.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Bitter Fruit is a fantastic book on what the United
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Fruit Company did in Guatemala.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, I am very keen to read that. Also, calling
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: this a war is a little eh, because it was
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: mostly state violence against civilians. Indigenous people were disproportionately displaced, disappeared,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: or killed, especially when Rios Montt was in power. because
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: he deliberately led a genocide against the Mayan population. And then,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: as we mentioned, he was overthrown in another coup staged
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: by his defense minister about a year and a half
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: after he was put in power. But after that, Rios
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Montt stayed in politics. He was involved with the Congress
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: of Guatemala for a while, which granted him legal immunity
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: from the lawsuits against him, alleging that he committed war
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: crimes while he was the leader in the early 80s.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: But this immunity ended in 2012 when his legislative term expired.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: And so a year after that, in 2013, he was
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: sentenced to 80 years in prison for crimes against humanity
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: and genocide. But the constitutional court annulled his sentence and
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: then he was supposed to have a retrial. But before
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: that could happen or before it could finish, he died
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: of a heart attack in April of 2018. Or was
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: he murdered by La Llorona?
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I can only hope. Truly.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It was like the very least you can hope is
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that it was extremely fucking painful.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, just brief history lesson. This is all information
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: that I admittedly did not really know very much at
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: all about.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Most people don't. It's not... Not a ton of people
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: know much about Guatemala. Usually when I'm Latina, the first
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: thing is, oh, you're Mexican. And then I'm like, no,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: let me explain about this tiny little country that the U.S.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: keeps interfering into. And I've hosted cooking classes for Guatemalan
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: cooking along Los Angeles. Or I'm even trying to figure
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: out how I can host tours where I can show
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: people parts of Guatemala that aren't the parts of Antigua
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: where you're all buying... Timu worry dolls. There isn't a
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: ton of education about Central America, especially in Los Angeles,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: because the primary Latin American person that you meet is Mexican.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: And most people assume because these countries touch that they
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: have a lot in common. But in fact, Guatemalan, both
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Guatemalan politics and also Guatemalan history is really different because
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: we've got like Mayan, Isiel Garufa. We've, got more in
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: common with the caribbean than we do with like.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Mexico interesting i didn't realize it's.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: The coastal parts we love our plantains.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah this is this is just uh not something that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: i i was really taught about at all in a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: way that um i feel like we found so many
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: times on this show and is Yet another reason that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: if you do live somewhere where this is not going
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: to be prioritized in spite of it being a very important,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: impactful part of history that was going on when you
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: were alive, which just is absurd.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: That movies like La Llorona become so valuable and, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: not just, I mean, I'm trying to think of another
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: example of a movie we've covered on the show that
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: is doing all of this lifting in a really effortless way,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: because it's, it's not as if, you know, Bustamante is, um,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: going out of his way to like handhold his audience
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: by any means, but it integrates so cleanly into the
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: story he's telling. And, um, yeah i'm grateful to this
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: movie on many counts yeah including it just being a
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: really really good beautiful tense movie that doesn't i don't
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: know like this is this is kind of a separate
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: thing but doesn't even need jump scares i saw some
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: criticisms around like there's not enough jump scares i'm like
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: It doesn't need it. It doesn't need it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: It's all about the vibes and the aura of the scene.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Because it's very eerie.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: It creates tension through mood. Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Anyways, all that to say that to be operating on
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: that level and be telling a very important and under-discussed,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: particularly in the U.S. area of history, is so unreal.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I'm also I'm curious because I also had to do
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: a bunch of research on the mythology and folklore around
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: La Llorona. But I'm curious how how common of a
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: legend it is in Guatemala.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: So I'm Guatemalan and Salvadorian. In El Salvador, she has
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: a slightly different name, and I'm going to say it
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: wrong because I only learned this word recently. Sí, Guanaba.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: They're pretty similar stories to Llorona in El Salvador. In Guatemala,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: it's everywhere. It's used to keep... In fact, sometimes Guatemalans
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: are surprised when I tell them it's not a Guatemalan story.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, no, all of Latin America has
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: a version of this. It's primarily used... To keep your
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: children home at night and to keep them away from
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: bodies of water. And I can't think of one Guatemalan
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: child that hasn't had an aunt or uncle go, I'm
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: a seahorse in the dark and scare the shit out
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: of us. Oh, boy.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: And now I do it to my nieces and nephews.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: I'll wait until the lights are off or they're in
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the shower and I'll just pull one of those rocks.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: It's like. For some reason, Latin America loves horror stories
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: to keep your children into behaving. My mom has a
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: lullaby that's basically like, go to sleep with a coyote,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: he's going to eat you. We've got La Llorona. We've
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: got El Sombrero, which is like a man with a
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: large hat that comes into town and he braids your
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: hair and you're hopelessly in love with him and you
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: waste away as he disappears. Oh, wow. Which is, like,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: our way of keeping young women away from strange men
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: wandering into town. Sure. A lot of, like, these folktales
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: are primarily used to, like, scare your children into behaving.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a classic.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: My neighbors have kids, and they invented... They invented a
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: fictional character named Officer Chan. If you invoke Officer Chan
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: in front of any of these children, they are in
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: bed in like two seconds.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Because one day I was like, wait, who's Officer Chan?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: They're like, he's not real. He's not real. He's just
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: a man.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Well, he sounds like a cop.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes. And the children are terrified of him. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Well, to get a little bit more into the legend,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: the folklore surrounding La Llorona.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot that plays into this mythology. There
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: are also different versions of the story depending on the
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: region or the interpretation of it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Or it seems like even like the time, like the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: story changes over time as well.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: From my understanding... And again, Vanessa, feel free to jump
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: in here. But the basic and I think most common
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: version of the story is that several hundred years ago,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: a young, beautiful indigenous woman fell in love with a
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: handsome man of a higher status. Seems like it's like
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: white colonizer vibes.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: They had two children together, but one day he abandoned
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: her for another woman and wanted to take their children
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: with him. So in a fit of like rage and despair,
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: the beautiful woman drowned her children in a river, but
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: then immediately realized the horror of what she had done
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: and ended her own life also by drowning. And now
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: she is said to be a ghostly presence with long
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: black hair, dressed in a white gown, and she roams
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: near bodies of water, crying for and looking for her children.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And she is... Is it that she... is thought to
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: like take whatever children she finds in case they might
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: be her children. Is that the idea?
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: She takes children thinking it's her children.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: And an interesting thing to note about these stories is
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of these stories are like, don't sleep with
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: the colonizer. But another part of these stories are usually
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: demonifying something an indigenous woman does to discredit them and
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: make them feel like this, like, heathen like other that
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: would behave in a way that we would not. And
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: that's where a lot of these stories come from. Same
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: thing with the idea of like a cop, like sleeping
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: with the colonizer as he comes in. It was often
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: a warning given to young women that, And it's interesting
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: to see how this iteration almost always leads to, oh,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: and then she went crazy.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Right, yes.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole, I mean, I feel like, Vanessa, you
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: probably know so much more than we do about the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: woman going mad stereotypes and the good versions of it,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the bad versions of it, but that that is so
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: inherent to what this myth is. is I really love
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: what Bustamante does with it. I think it's like, it's so,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: it's so smart. And so, you know, she becomes representative
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: of so many mothers who are just trying to survive
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: with their children. And I think like turning her into,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and every woman exacting revenge is so fucking cool.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. It's also interesting how prevalent this myth is
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: in the United States and to see the different ways
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: it's interpreted because last year I took my niece to
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Halloween Horror Nights and they had a like Latino myth
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: maze and through every single one she was like haha
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: cool and then we get to the Yorona room and
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: she's like.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: No not this one this one's real oh that rocks
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: also in my research so there were also like similar
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: figures of ghostly beings who cry by rivers existing in
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: folklore and mythology from pre-Columbian indigenous Mesoamerican cultures.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: So there are different theories about how the figure of
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: La Llorona became the legend that it is today. Once again,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not an expert on this, but there's kind of
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: these different theories. There's different interpretations of the legend. So
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: I'll just go through a few of them. One is
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: that the woman, the man and their children really existed.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: The children died in some way. And then the story
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: was told over and over again throughout the generations until
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: it was like imbued with folkloric qualities and then became legend.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Another kind of theory is that existing mythology was like
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: mapped onto a real person and So in this case,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: specifically the mythology of the Mexica goddess Quejua Cotol. I'm
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: sure I did not pronounce that correctly.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: You actually got pretty close.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: Did I?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Yay. Her mythology is superimposed onto the story
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: of La Melinche. For anyone who doesn't know, La Melinche
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: is the Nahua woman who served as the interpreter for
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Hernan Cortes during... the Spanish conquest. She also had a
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: baby with him, but their son was taken away from
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: her and sent to Spain to get an education. And
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: La Malinche is a complicated figure. She has been viewed
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: as a traitor, but also as a kind of victim
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: of circumstance and colonization. We don't have time to get
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: into it, but she's relevant because she's often kind of
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: conflated with La Llorona or like Her story is sort
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: of like mapped on to the legend of La Llorona,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: things like that. And then another approach or kind of
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: like interpretation of the La Llorona legend is that it
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: is a metaphor for... the conquistadors brutalizing and colonizing the
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: indigenous people and their land, which is the approach that
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Jairo Bustamante takes with this film. A different approach is
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: taken in The Curse of La Llorona from 2019. Let
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: me tell you what.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, I'm seeing that Linda Cardellini is
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: the star of.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: So I guess let me just take a little detour
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: and briefly touch on this.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: So.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: the way that movie characterizes the La Llorona figure is very,
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: very different from the movie we're talking about today.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: The conjuring universe withing something. I've never heard of such
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: a thing.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: So this movie really emphasizes like her jealousy that she,
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: she drowned her children in a fit of, in a,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: in like a jealous fit of rage and, and then
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: is consumed with grief and guilt, and then haunts the
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Linda Cardellini character and her two young children. Oh my God.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: And it really leans into the hag-like appearance. Sure. Again,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: the jealous woman trope. She's pure evil with kind of
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: no context. There's basically no nuance here, especially when you
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: compare it to the Alma character. From the Bustamante film. Also,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: it's like, why does a movie about a figure from
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Latin American folklore have a protagonist who is a white
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: American non-Latina woman? And then the two characters who are
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: foils to her are Latina women. So you really have
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: to question that.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Anyway. I mean, and it's, and it's also, I mean,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: this is like tale as old as time. You'll never
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: believe which movie got more marketing, got on more screens,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: got seen by more people. The Curse of La Llorona,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Conjuring style, starring Linda Carly, sorry, I can't get over
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the Linda Carly, all due respect to her, made over
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars. And so it again, when we're
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: talking about like how movies, you know, I always, I
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: think all three of us are probably the same camp
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: here of like, I always chafe so much on it's
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: not that deep because while occasionally true, it very often
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: is that deep. And the movies that are put in
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: front of people and what they're saying is that deep.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: And this is an interesting case study that these two
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: movies who came out the same year, One of them
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: is made by a Guatemalan filmmaker who is really interacting
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: with and interrogating the myth. It is like an effortless
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: lesson in history. It's tense. It's amazing. And then there's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: like Pee Pee Poo Poo directed by Mike. I'm pretty sure.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: What's his name?
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Michael Chavez.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, whatever. Maybe he's great. But all that to say,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: you know, which stories get put in front of wide
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: audiences and which don't. It is that deep.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Man, that sounds... Brave of you to watch that, Caitlin.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: That sounds really... It was....
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: On top of just, like, leaning into tropes, it's also
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: just a bad movie. Like, so much of the story
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: logic doesn't make sense. So much of, like, characters' reactions
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: to things make no sense. It's absurd.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Yay. Yeah. I think a big barrier to people watching
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: this as well is that people are still very weird
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: about watching movies in a different language. Yeah. Because they
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: require more attention. And also a movie like this that
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: has both like Spanish and indigenous languages in it, like
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: it might be a little bit harder to grasp, but like.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: As someone that enjoys international movies, although I don't count
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: this one because I just understand it. But as someone
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: that enjoys international movies, you're missing a lot on pieces
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: of history you wouldn't have understood otherwise by not being
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: willing to read subtitles.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by not being willing to put your fucking phone
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: down for an hour and a half, basically.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this movie is on, I mean, it's on Criterion.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: It's available to stream for if you haven't seen it
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: and you're listening to this episode. Please, for crying out loud,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: watch it. It is very easy to watch. There's a
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: number of free ways to watch it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's on Shudder, too.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: It is, yes.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And it's also on something called Sling? I don't know.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: It's on a bunch of stuff.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Feminist icon sling thank you i'm sure the sling.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Uh but yeah that's um that's really frustrating to hear
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: because yeah again like vanessa there's like so many factors
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of like why doesn't a movie like this get seen
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: in english-speaking countries and it's also just because I think,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and I would like blame executives for that too, that
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: executives think that English speaking audiences don't quote unquote want
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: to read when you see that there, when there are
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: international movies that do well in the U S that
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: aren't in English, they do really well.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: It's like, look at parasite.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I was going to say like so much of,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I do blame individuals, but
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: so much with, with, especially with like entertainment is just
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of fucking guys in a boardroom. Assuming
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: they know what people want and being wrong 100% of
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: They have such a low opinion. Like, if you're listening
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: to this, you should be mad that executives have such
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: a low opinion of you. You should be mad that
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: these people think that you want drivel.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: That you want the curse of La Llorona and not
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: La Llorona. Yeah.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, truly. Because their assumptions are usually... racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: the list goes on.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: And when a movie does get through, without fail, I mean,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I think the big, big example in the U.S. that
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: reminds me most recently is our conversation about sinners and
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: how every Ryan Coogler movie that comes out, executives are like,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, do people want... black stories from a
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: black director and the movie makes a hundred trillion dollars
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and is really good every single fucking time. And I
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: want to believe it will not happen again, but it's just,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: it keeps happening every five years. We have to remember
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: that people actually do like women protagonists if the movie
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't suck. Uh, Like, it's just, it's ridiculous.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: I watched an interview with the director, Jairo Bustamante, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: he talks a little bit about his inspiration and approach
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: to writing and directing this movie and So basically, he
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: wanted to tell a story about the state silencing and
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: erasing the genocide that happened in his country. And he
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: wanted this to be a movie that would appeal to
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: an international audience as well as a local one. So
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: he conducted a market research study and found that Guatemalan
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: audiences were most commonly watched horror movies and superhero movies.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: So he decided to take the figure of La Llorona,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: who is, depending on who you ask, regarded as a
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: superhero and a horror figure, and basically use her as
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the vessel to tell this story about silencing genocide. And
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: then later in the interview, he acknowledges the misogyny present
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: in this legend because it's, you know, a scorned woman
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: who's always crying, partly because a man left her. And
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: so I wanted to pull a quick quote. He says
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: it in Spanish, but this is translated to English. He says,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: it was time to make a vigilante out of her
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: and make her cry for something more relevant than a man.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: And I was like, hell yeah.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. Shout out to Ally Jairo Bustamante.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I love the character changes. The fact that
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: he did market research, man, that's indie filmmaking, like 5D chess.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: And then just talking about the movie itself.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about the characters because this movie is,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, primarily its central cast is women processing the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: genocidal crimes of their patriarch or refusing to process the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: genocidal crimes of their patriarch.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: All in very different ways.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: And I think especially the scene where Sarah is talking
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: to Natalia and she's like, hey, the kids at school
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: are saying grandpa did bad things. And you can like
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: see that Natalia both like believes it, but she's trying
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: to talk her out of it where it's like, yeah,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: she's complicit too. And like, we didn't even get to
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: the fact that like Natalia's husband and Sarah's father was
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: a man that disappeared. Right. And she like, she's directly
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: affected by this and she's choosing to like live in
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: the riches of her father's labor and in the benefits
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: of what he had done for her, even though like,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: the man she loved disappeared for speaking up.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Is that what happened? I wasn't totally sure what the
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: implications were there.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Yes, because she finds the piece of paper and she
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: like realizes she recognizes him from the missing persons.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, which adds like a very interesting dimension to Sarah's
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: character too, even though she's like still kind of too
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: young to be fully, I guess, engaged in that conversation
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: or that doesn't fully happen within the movie. But I
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: think with that context with that, there is like so
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: much of her own family history being hidden from her,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: including what happened to her father, which it seems like
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: maybe nobody knows. You can sort of just assume her
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: connecting with Alma and Alma kind of protecting her, even
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: though she is using her as an instrument. I think
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: it is like very intentional that Alma tells, I mean,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: that that happens at the end, tells Sarah that, To
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: make sure that she's breathing, to have the oxygen, like
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: steal the oxygen from her grandfather. That Alma is not
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: going to sink to the level of Enrique by killing
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: a child. Although, of course, happy to kill him. Yeah,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I was really struck by the scene toward the end
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: where the ghosts or the spirits....
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Of the people who died in the genocide are standing
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: on the lawn of the house. And Valeriana, who is
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: a fascinating character because she is indigenous, but she's also
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: a devoted servant of Monteverde. And we can talk more
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: about that, but she is doing that protective ritual. And
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: all the, all the women are there. Carmen, Natalia, Sarah,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: And she's saying, you know, we're innocent. We shouldn't be
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: punished for what this man did. And everyone is very
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: happy to basically be absolved of their complicity.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: But there's so many layers to Valeriana being the character
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: who does that because like she is a part of
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: this family, but also she's, there's that moment where I
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: think it's the first time that Enrique is asking her
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: for protection and And the way that it's phrased is
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: very specific. And all my notes closed when my computer crashed.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: But it is something like, if one of you has
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it written down, it's like, protect us from who seeks
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: to harm us. When she is protecting the person who
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: seeks to harm her.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: And who seeks to harm people like her. And there's
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: just like, in that line alone, I was so struck
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: by it. Because she is like, circumstantially so... caught between. And,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and I wish, I guess I do wish if there
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: was one character who we could really know more about
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: at the expense of kind of any other character in
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: this home, it would be Valeriana because, you know, I mean,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: she is very smart. She's very observant. She's very shrewd.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: You can, I mean, her dealings with Alma, I mean, Alma,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: who basically everyone else in the household ignores if they
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: don't need something from her, except for Sarah. But that
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Valeriana figures out sort of who Alma is, conducts her
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: own internal investigation. Like, you have to think she is,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: she's well aware of the very complicated position she has
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: in this household. And I just wish we got to
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: spend more time with her. I feel like she sort
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: of ends up being more incidental to the other characters
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in the house.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah. Especially when she's translating for the other housekeepers
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: and she's like, they're scared, they're upset.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: They just want their pain. They want to go home.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: And she's being put in such a horrible position of
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: translating Carmen's cruel words of like, you're so ungrateful. And, every,
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: every time it comes to like managing the staff, it's like,
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: Oh you, you do it. Cause it's your people.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: When, meanwhile, she is literally in the, like, like biologically
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a part of the evil family. And I don't know.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, you, I fully believe that as much as
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: we get to know about Floriana, which unfortunately doesn't include
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: a last name, which I was like, come on guys. But, um, that,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: she would be aware. She knows Enrique. She knows who
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: he is, what he's like. I just think it would
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: be kind of impossible for that to not cross your
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: mind if you'd been with a family for so long. Yeah,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I guess I just wish we had more with her
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: because the moments that she is very active in the
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: plot are so charged and powerful. And while I do
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: appreciate how much the movie gets into watching i guess
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: carmen specifically kind of unravel and have to face the
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: scale of what she has been complicit to for her
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: entire life in order to ensure her own survival which
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: is being party to the colonizer 101 yeah that's important
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: but i i do yeah i just i just want
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: a more valeriana i guess I wanted.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: More of her and more Alma. Because if I had
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: one criticism about this movie, I feel like perhaps it
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: does a little too much to center the powerful white
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: family who either committed or is complicit in the genocide
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: and tend to give them more focus than Alma. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: I know that she shows up a little later in
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: the story, but even so, I also wanted... more.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Of her yes and also Maria Mercedes Coroy as an
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: actress is very magnetic oh yeah she has this intense
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: gaze that just draws you in and she's in another
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: really good movie that's also in Cafeteria but she has
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: this like silky long hair that she kind of uses
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: to like as a character almost like the way she
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: like moves it in front of her face and like
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: looks over her shoulder. She's very good at saying a
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: lot without needing to open her mouth. Yes.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: So expressive.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: She is incredible in this. And again, yeah, like you're saying, Caitlin,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: with most of her character is having to come through
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: just through her, through her expressions. And even though we
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: do get the, I guess, reveal feels like too cheap
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: of a word, but we get the reveal of what
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: happened to her family and that she is herself a
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: victim of this genocide and her children are a victim
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of this genocide that I don't know. I, I, it's
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: an interesting thing. Cause I, I, I was thinking about, uh,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I only saw the zone of interest once, but, but
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: that both of those movies have an interest in the
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: banality of evil and.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Which is worth interrogating and.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Definitely. Definitely. Um, but I, but I always leave, those
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: movies kind of wanting more insight into the people just
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: outside right and and so while this movie is so
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: effective at just the low hum of dissent right outside
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: the walls the whole time and how performing normalcy which
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: they should not which Enrique should not even be free
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: to enjoy and These attempts at normalcy, but that it's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: rotting him and it's rotting the family and that even
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: them getting away with this horrific genocide is corrosive to everyone.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: It still leaves you, I guess, yeah, it just leaves
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: you wanting to know more about... The people get, and
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: I also think about, these are all such different movies,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: but Oppenheimer, right? Another movie that really focuses on, wow,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: he did this really terrible thing. How does he feel
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: about it? And it's like, that is not even in
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: the top 1000 movies. questions that we should be interrogating first. Again,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: this isn't a criticism of the filmmaker. I just, yeah,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. And it's not, it's
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: not one movie's job to do everything either. I think
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: that this, that again, like the way that this movie
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: tackles the banality of evil is very intentional and very effective.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: For sure. I, I have a question and I'm curious
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: to hear the two of your thoughts on it. As
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: far as Carmen and, strangling her husband at the end.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if that was implied to be La
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Llorona almost like possessing her to enact her revenge via Carmen,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: or if it was Carmen finally coming to terms with
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: the thing that she had been denying or dismissing throughout
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the rest of the movie, because For so much of it,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: she's saying, you know, really atrocious racist things about Indigenous
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: people and particularly Indigenous women. She says something like, well,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: whatever my husband might have done, it's in the past
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: and it should stay in the past. We shouldn't.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that really stuck me was
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: with Alma, another sort of clear moment about where this
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: family is at is that after Enrique is seen masturbating
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: in front of Alma, something the whole family seems to know,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: or maybe Natalia is just learning happens all the time
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: that he assaults and harasses indigenous women always has. And
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: that Natalia goes to apologize to Alma for her father's behavior.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: And then Carmen's right behind her saying, basically, it was
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: what you were wearing. Like, don't wear that skimpy little
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: thing that presumably Carmen gave her. Like, it's just.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: It was her work uniform. She assigned it to her.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: Her strangling him was a little bit of both.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: That's where I landed.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: It was both, like, the Llorona, but also... Carmen, you know,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: is complicit. But also, like, this man put her through
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: total hell for the last few decades. And now she's, like,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: seeing it all at once. Like, this is the price
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: of what I paid. I think it was a combination
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: of both.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Right, because this was right after... she saw him shoot
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: her granddaughter. This is shortly after he shot at her,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: at Carmen.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: So I landed on like, it's a little bit of both.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: She's possessed by La Llorona, but also finally reconciling.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that she's been forced to by, I guess,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: what we could argue is the possession. She's been forced
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to what she has refused to do, it seems like,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: their whole marriage, which is actually look at what her
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: husband emboldened in the genocide by being put directly in
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Alma's shoes. She, she can no longer hide behind walls.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: She can no longer, I really appreciated the cinematography of how,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: even though like I'm of two minds and you're like,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: you do want to, who, who the protesters are is
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: kind of a reveal and, But that you see them
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: as if you're hiding, like as if you're Carmen and
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: that she's found ways to hide from this for so
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: long and that she's forced to actually experience it. Like, yeah,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: I like that it's not totally clear because it works
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: both ways.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: For sure. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: talk about?
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, we've talked about a lot of the stuff I've
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: been excited to talk about. Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Another line that really stuck with me is at the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: end of the testimony we see in the trial of
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: the Mayan woman recounting her story and all the brutality
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: she experienced and witnessed. And at the very end of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: her testimony, she says, I'm not embarrassed to tell you
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: what I went through. I hope you're not embarrassed to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: do justice. And I was like, oh. Oh my God,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: that's powerful.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: What a line.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: It's so good.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: We mentioned that the movie passes the Bechdel test.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: It does. Sorry, I just wanted to... This movie has
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: a co-writer, Lissandra Sanchez.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Lissandra Sanchez.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to shout out other people because this
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: movie was... filmed in in Guatemala and like you're saying
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Vanessa like went on to be an Oscar contender did
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: very well and I feel like doesn't get talked enough
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: about so just before we wrap up if you haven't
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: seen it it's so easy to watch uh you know
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: just check it out it's very very very.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: Good truly the way that I came across this film
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: was kind of by accident I So it's spooky movie season,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: of course. I was looking at a list of, I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: think it was a list of like the highest rated
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: horror movies on Rotten Tomatoes. And I was just going
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: through this list to see what we haven't covered yet
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: on the podcast. And this movie is pretty close to
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the top because it has like a 95 or 96%
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not that Rotten Tomatoes should
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: be the like end-all be-all of a movie's quality, of course.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: But a lot of critics really enjoyed this movie. And
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: so I was scrolling through the list and I came
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: upon it. And when I saw the title of it,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: I was conflating it with The Curse of La Llorona.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: And I was like, what do you mean this has
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: like a 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes? Wasn't this a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: famously terrible movie?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: If I'm Jairo Bustamante, God, imagine how... pissed you would
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: be if a shitty movie with basically the same title
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: as your movie came out the same year. I'd be like, psyop, psyop.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Right? Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: So I saw this movie. I was like, wait a minute. Oh,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: this is a different movie. And then I looked into
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: it and then I was like, oh shit, like we
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: need to cover this. So, and now here we are,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: we did it. And then our nipple scale, where we
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: rate the movie on a scale of zero to five
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: It's going to get a high rating. I'll dock it
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: a little bit for not focusing more on... the characters
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: who are indigenous women, especially Valeriana and Alma. But I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: think what the movie does accomplish is really effective and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: really important and, you know, examining the complicity of this
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: family and the kind of mental gymnastics members of this
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: family have to do to live with themselves. This is
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: a small part of it, but like Monteverde's fetishization of
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: the same group of people who he killed in a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: genocide which just demonstrates that the colonial imperial mindset operates
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: on those in power not viewing the people who they
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: are targeting as people which is how the colonizers are
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: able to both sexually objectify them and murder them so
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: I thought it was important for this movie to include
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: that Also, when I learned about the details of this
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: genocide in Guatemala, how it was European settlers and capitalist
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: enterprises stealing indigenous land and murdering indigenous people, a large
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: percentage of whom were children, it's impossible not to draw
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: the parallels between that and what Israel is currently doing
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: to Palestinians. And this is exactly what so many genocides
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: throughout history have looked like. So, so yeah, I think
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: this movie is just doing so much. And I love
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: this interpretation of the La Llorona figure and And I'm
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: going to give it four and a half nipples. And
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give them all to Alma.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah, I'm going to meet you there. I think
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: that this movie is so singular. It is doing so
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: many things. And this movie both caused me to learn
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: more about the genocide in Guatemala than I had previously known.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: It also is just an incredibly good, well-realized movie. And so, yes,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: I agree with you, Caitlin. I think that I would
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: have appreciated knowing more about the characters who are having
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: to endure the violence brought upon them by Enrique's administration.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: I also am very team... valeriana i want to know
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: what she's thinking how she's feeling.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: More what mental gymnastics is she doing yeah.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Right because every every character in this home is having
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: to do a very specific kind of mental gymnastics and
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: i feel like valeriana is the most interesting character in
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: the house and i wish we we mostly see her
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: reacting we don't get to really get moments with her
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: interior yeah but outside of that i mean i i
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: just think it is like it's unreal it's so good Yeah,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go for nips and I'm going to
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: give those nips to Maria Mercedes Caray. I'm going to
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: give two to Jairo Bustamante, who I'm very excited to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: see other movies of his. Vanessa, have you seen other
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: movies of his? This is my first.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: I have not. And I know he does other movies
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: about specific things happening in Guatemala. So I really want
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: to watch them. And I know Maria Mercedes Caray is
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: in another movie about Maya women that I've heard really
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: good things about.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Incredible. Yeah, I'm really excited to dig more into his filmography.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: And then I'll give my last nipple to Maria Telon,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: who played Valeriana.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: Vanessa, how about you?
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: I'm going to give this movie 4.5 nips. And I
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: give all the nips to the women actors in this movie.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: Because they play such a kaleidoscope of complicated figures.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: From women that are complicit to women that are victimized.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: All of the women in this movie had to portray
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: such layered, complicated performances. And my favorite moments are when
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: they are together on screen because they bounce off of
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: each other so well.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I know. Especially Natalia and Carmen.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Natalia and Carmen in that scene were Natalia's like, mom,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: how can you not believe these things? And she's just like, oh,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: they're whores. They lie.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: They're whores who were paid to lie.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Carmen is really doing some nasty work in this movie.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: But also in a way that I think offers, this
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: is always like such a difficult line to toe. I
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: think this movie shows her, at least in my estimation,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: just enough empathy to understand why she's doing what she's
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: doing without the plot or the story excusing her at all.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: But I do think it is important and instructive to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: understand why people ally to powers in the way that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: they do.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Because the movie basically ends with Her strangling and killing
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: her husband. And then the next shot we see of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: her is the back of her head at his funeral.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: We don't get any sort of like, look at this
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: triumphant thing she did to redeem herself.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: And we don't even get to see her grief, really.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: We just are like, that is just the thing that
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: happened in the story.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for coming back for
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: a sixth time.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: Let's make it a seven.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: I love being on the Bechdel cast.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: We love having you. Just because we have you here
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and you're a horror authority, are there any horror releases
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: or horror rewatches that you're particularly excited about this season?
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: Every year I show my niece a scarier and scarier movie.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: And this year she watched Hellraiser for herself. And I'm
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: really excited to show her Hellraiser 2 because it's one
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: of the few movies in which an older woman is
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: a seductress.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: Ooh, interesting.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: And so Hellraiser 2 is one of my favorite rewatches
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: because Julia should have been the villain in one, but
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: they made it her boyfriend, so they made her the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: villain in two. And she's a woman in her 40s,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: and she's portrayed as sexy and evil and seductive. And
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: you just never see that. And that's why Hellraiser 2
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: is like an interesting movie because I don't think we've
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: ever seen a villain like her again.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah. I was going to say in their 40s
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: and sexy and evil and seductive me vibes.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Anyway.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: But yes, please come back anytime you want to talk
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: about whatever you'd like.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Truly, it's such a wide array of movies we've covered
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: with you at this point. Surprise us.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: If you ever want to do The Thing, I would
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: love to do The Thing because there's not a single
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: woman on that set. There's not a single woman in
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: that movie.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: But it's a pretty good movie.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: It is a woman-free production and it's an incredible movie.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: Where can people follow you online, check out any of
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: your work? Plug away.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: You can find me on NESS Guerrero or SNES Guerrero
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: all across social media. It's usually one or the other.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: And I've been posting my reel because I'm looking for work.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: So if any of you know anybody that's looking for
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: a producer, find me. And yeah, if you ever want
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: me to guest on your pod or something, just shoot
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: me an email. If you're queer, I'll say yes.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: And you can follow us on Instagram at Bechdelcast. You
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: can subscribe to our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon, where we do
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: two bonus episodes every single month. Plus you get access
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: to the back catalog of episodes. Around 200 bonus episodes.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: This month we are covering Back Rooms and Saw 2
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: on the Matreon.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: Lock in.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: Get excited.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: And with that, we will see you next Thursday.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: See you then.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: Bye. The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: produced by me, Jamie Loftus.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Sophie Lichterman.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: That's me. And our logo and merch and all of
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Ever heard of her? Oh, my God. And our theme song,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Iconic. And a special thanks to the one and only
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Aristotle Acevedo.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.