Día de muertos (film)
Día de muertos ("Day of the Dead"), also known as Día de difuntos and Los hijos de la guayaba,[1][2][3][4] ("The Children of the Guava") is a 1988 Mexican comedy-drama film directed by Luis Alcoriza. It is Alcoriza's penultimate film as director and his last one made entirely in Mexico;[1] his last film directed, La sombra del ciprés es alargada, was a Mexican-Spanish co-production.
| Día de muertos | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Luis Alcoriza |
| Written by | Luis Alcoriza Fernando Galiana |
| Produced by | Luis García de León |
| Starring | Pedro Weber Manuel "Flaco" Ibáñez Carmen Salinas Adalberto Martínez María Rojo Sergio Ramos Patricia Rivera Ernesto Gómez Cruz Leticia Perdigón Edgardo Gazcón Eugenia Avendaño Fernando Luján |
| Cinematography | Rosalío Solano |
| Edited by | Carlos Savage |
| Music by | Pedro Plascencia |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Televicine |
Release date |
|
Running time | 90 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
Plot
In a cemetery on the Day of the Dead, the lawyer Talamantes is going to place a cross on his mother's grave. There, he meets with other assistants who commemorate his relatives: a bricklayer, a poet, the shoemaker Zacarías, the plumber Baltazar and the hairdresser Pedro, with their respective families. In the heat of alcohol, they all argue, show their weaknesses, resolve disagreements in couples, fight, flirt, reconcile and swear each other eternal friendship.
Cast
- Pedro Weber as Baltazar (as Pedro Weber "Chatanuga")
- Manuel "Flaco" Ibáñez as Zacarías
- Carmen Salinas[4] as Cholita
- Adalberto Martínez as The Thief (as Adalberto Martinez "Resortes")
- María Rojo[2] as Yolanda
- Sergio Ramos as Pedro (as Sergio Ramos "El Comanche")
- Patricia Rivera
- Ernesto Gómez Cruz as The Poet
- Leticia Perdigón as Martha
- Edgardo Gazcón as Salvador
- Eugenia Avendaño as Enriqueta
- Fernando Luján as Francisco de Jesús Talamantes
- Raúl Araiza as Beto
- Héctor Suárez
Analysis
In an interview collected in the book Memorias de posguerra: Diálogos con la cultura del exilio by Manuel García García, director Luis Alcoriza described his film thus, "[L]a película salió muy dura. Era una agresión frontal al sistema y a la moral dominante. Había una burla agresiva a la muerte que superaba la crítica común del mexicano." ("The movie came out very hard. It was a frontal assault on the dominant system and morals. There was an aggressive mockery of death that surpassed the common criticism of the Mexican.") He added, "La gente se asustó un poco. La peícula es divertida pero con un fondo violento. Abordé el tema de la figura de la madre de manera muy frontal y eso aquí no está bien visto." ("People got a little scared. The movie is funny but with a violent background. I approached the subject of the figure of the mother in a very frontal way and that here is not well seen.")[5]
See also
References
- Miranda López, Raúl (2006). Del quinto poder al séptimo arte: la producción fílmica de Televisa (in Spanish). CONACULTA/Cineteca Nacional. p. 11. ISBN 970-9961-04-7.
Destaca Día de difuntos, (también conocida como Los hijos de la guayaba) penúltima película de Luis Alcoriza y la última dirigida en México. También será la única filmada para TeleviCine por este famoso hombre de cine. ["Stands out Día de difuntos, (also known as Los hijos de la guayaba), penultimate film by Luis Alcoriza and the last one directed in Mexico. It will also be the only one filmed for TeleviCine by this famous filmmaker."]
- Garcia Berumen, Frank Javier (2016). Latino Image Makers in Hollywood: Performers, Filmmakers and Films Since the 1960s. McFarland. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-4766-1411-3.
- Dicine (in Spanish). 1991. p. 39.
Los hijos de la guayaba fue una de las primeras películas mexicanas que encontramos, pero el nombre era tan repelente que la pasamos por alto. ["Los hijos de la guayaba was one of the first Mexican movies we came across, but the name was so repellent that we overlooked it."]
- Galindo, Alfredo (1998). Coahuila y sus protagonistas en los primeros cien años de cine mexicano e internacional (in Spanish). Coahuila: Gobierno del Estado de Coahuila. p. 126. ISBN 968-7568-26-7.
[E]l último año del sexenio delamadridista lo inicia Carmen Salinas participando en la última película del cineasta Luis Alcoriza, con quien ella hizo Las fuerzas vivas y A paso de cojo en los setenta, siendo ésta Día de difuntos o Los hijos de la Guayaba, en 1988[.] [The last year of the De la Madrid sexenio was started by Carmen Salinas participating in the last film of the filmmaker Luis Alcoriza, with whom she made Las fuerzas vivas and A paso de cojo in the seventies, this being Día de difuntos o Los hijos de la Guayaba, in 1988.]
- García García, Manuel (2014). Memorias de posguerra: Diálogos con la cultura del exilio (1939-1975) (in Spanish). Universitat de València. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-84-370-9532-5.