Cabaretera, a sub-genre from the Epoca de Oro (the golden epoch of Mexican filmmaking, 1930s—1950s), combines film noir with melodrama and musical numbers. Often set in cabarets (brothels), these films talk about the plight of the prostitute who – not without their pride and dignity – are forced to being the breadwinner in a poverty-stricken community.

 

El lugar sin límites harks back to those days. We follow the plight of La Manuela, a transvestite* who together with daughter La Japonesita works as a fichera (a dancehall performer) in the brothel run by Madame La Japonesa, La Japonesita's mother.

 

The return of Pancho, a hyper-macho trucker, disrupts the family regime. The trucker's attraction to the #flamenco dancing fichera is at odds with his machismo. Him being outed as a maricón (a Mexican slur for homosexual) would be the end of his world.

 

El lugar remains a groundbreaking film, not only in how it handles taboos like #gender roles and trans- and homosexuality, but also because it highlights how (self) destructive #machismo is in Mexican society.

 

Sergio de la Mora's excellently researched EL LUGAR SIN LÍMITES: Ripstein in Review delves much deeper than this little writeup here. Do read it (spoilers ahead).

 

*Roberto Cobo's La Manuela is transsexual. The term “transvestite” is what's used in the film and typical for its time.

After her husband is gone, Alice (Ellen Burstyn) sells her stuff and the house, picks up her son Tommy (Alfred Lutter III) and embarks on fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a singer just like Alice Faye.

Tommy: Life is short.

Alice: Yeah, well, so are you.

Drak [“dragon” or “devil”] returns to his village. No one understands why he came back, or where he has been. The villagers postulate smugglers and there's other drunk nefarious thoughts, but for sure they know that with the potter, the draught returned. In an unspoken ritual sung in old tongues, the grey women summon the rain. The forest, dry as tinder, has taken the cattle, all there is. Drak knows where the animals went and a deal is struck.

“Don't you recognise me?”

– Drak

Drak sa vracia speaks in mere whispers and smoky greys. The main characters – the #fire, smoke, pottery, and composer Ilja Zeljenka's often silent motif – weave their wordless presence throughout the ancient landscape; that same landscape that carved itself into the locals' being.

Quintessential Americana. Filmed in Canada.

“The sun looks ghostly when there's a mist on a river and everything's quiet. I never knowed it before.”

– Linda

After a horrible birthday alone followed by a lovely night out, Norah wakes up with a terrible hangover and a hunch of being a murderess.

“How about you slip into something more comfortable, like a few drinks and some Chinese food?”

– Harry

The Blue Gardenia is Lang's hard-bitten take on the gruesome Black Dahlia murder case and part of his newspaper noir trilogy together with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both from 1956.