Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

The Crime of Father Amaro (Mexico 2002, 118 min. dir: Carlos Carrera, cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Ana Claudia Talancon, Andres Montiel)

What girl could resist Gael Bernal? Especially if he is a priest and she loves Jesus? This was a big hit in Mexico, which seems strange for a movie based a Portuguese novel written in 1880 by Jose Maria Eca de Queiros. He was a cosmopolitan writer who often took on the Church.

The movie moves the action from a sleepy town near Lisbon to a sleepy town near Mexico City. Far enough away so all the intrigue of small town life can play out, but near enough to feel big city sophistication lurking over the hill. Everyone here is having an affair with somebody.

The local priest has been fucking his maid since she was young and good looking (she’s now middle-aged). He’s also available for baptisms at he hacienda of the drug lord. He’s the biggest contributor to the priest’s pet project: a new hospital. The town mayor, known affectionately as “Gordo” (fatty) has a live and let live attitude towards it all.

Into this sleazy backwater comes a new priest, Father Amaro (Gael). His blue eyes immediately set of an estrogen flow in Jesus-loving Amelia. He rents a room claiming he wants to give her instructions for joining an order of nuns. And he proceeds to give her very intense instructions on the bed, nonstop. In the next room a mentally handicapped child listens in. Weird.

There is melodrama for everyone, and at almost two hours, you have to take a head count to see how many have fallen from grace. The neat trick is making an 1880 novel work in contemporary Mexico, and keeping the pot boiling. And there’s the satisfaction of seeing Gael Garcia Bernal play a priest who can’t keep his zipper zipped.

Innocent Voices (El Salvador 2004, 130 min. dir: Luis Mandoki, cast: Carlos Padilla, Leonor Varela)

Boys hide in school bathrooms while soldiers search with automatic weapons. They cry for their mothers. Their crime: they are twelve years old. Chava watches. He is eleven. The war in El Salvador started in 1980 and went on for more than a decade. It didn’t take long to exhaust the supply of recruits. The army went into the schools each year, drafting twelve-year olds.

The most devastating war films are not about the battles but the people caught in the middle. Innocent Voices is one of the best, but the least known. It should be up there with Shenandoah and Drums Along the Mohawk. But nobody ever gave this film a popularity award. El Salvador is where cleaning women come from who tape pictures of their children to their employee lockers. Nobody cares. More Americans know about Rwanda than El Salvador.

Chava, lives in a small village with his mother, sister, brother. His grandmother lives down the road. His father left for the US years before. The villagers are caught between the lines of the government army, sponsored by the US; and the guerrillas, manned by local insurgents. Chava is about to turn 12, and is living the last days of his youth before the army will snatch him. The film catches him between the playfulness of childhood with his puppy-love girlfriend; and the death, misery and destruction he sees daily all around.

The incredible performances of Chava and his mother, and the interweaving of normal childhood innocence with killing and death make this movie indelible. At one point he escapes a massacre of his friends, the guerillas, and runs for his life: only to encounter one of his former schoolmates, in the uniform of the army, manning a machine gun. Before the hour of his twelfth birthday, Chava’s mother packs him off with smugglers bound for the USA where he can join his father.

How Luis Mandoki got these performances from child actors is a mystery. I found this whole film remarkable for the authenticity, subtlety and performance. Made in Mexico, it really should be called a Mexican film, but since the story is in El Salvador, it is fitting to call it an El Salvadorian film. Probably one of the few. Who named it Innocent Voices? That’s enough to guarantee no one will see it. Why not 12-Year-Old Soldiers?

Maybe it could have attracted more than the bleeding heart audience. Turtles Can Fly, the excellent story of Kurdish children in wartime (MovieWithMe.com) is at least a curious title. The story of Innocent Voices‘ financing, title, and production is probably more complex than the movie itself. How sad we can recite the horrors of the Congo and Rwanda but remain clueless about tragedies so near.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (Mexico, 2001 105 min. dir: Alfonso Cuaron, cast: Maribel Verdu, Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna).

Is this a coming of age movie for two teenage boys or a loss of innocence movie for a whole country? Sex is a big part of it (and Maribel Verdu does it so well). But there is one scene, never commented upon by the characters. The two teenage boys driving Luisa to the beach in hopes of fucking her pass police rounding up Mexican peasants. As the car passes, the police roughly line up the peasants in a scene where we fear the next image will be their execution. It is chilling, but the car drives on without comment. We want to say, “Stop so we can see what happens?”

Many films, like many songs, wear disguises. “Puff the Magic Dragon” has been a favorite children’s song but is really about the pleasures of smoking dope. “Ring Around the Rosie” is about death from the bubonic plague in 14^th Century Europe. High Noon is about the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950’s. Bound for Glory argues for socialism in America. The creators of these works knew one thing: if you want to send a message, you are better wrapping it in entertainment.

The mystery of what lies beneath Y Tu Mama Tambien was answered by a film professor and historian, Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz. He saw references throughout the movie to class struggles between rich and poor in Mexico. Luisa (from Madrid) has the last name Cortes. Julio, the working class kid, is named Zapata. The rich boy’s first name is Tenoch. Cortes was the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. Zapata was the peasant who started a revolution. Tenoch is from Tenochtitlan; the Aztec name for Mexico City. Professor Acevedo-Munoz explains that rich politicians of the ruling PRI party often named their children Aztec names as a way of conveying upper class patriotism.

Once you catch on, you can find several more instances of class conflict in this sweet and sexy film. Julio’s sister studies sociology and supports the revolution in Chiapas. The boys are stopped in a Mexico City traffic jam caused by a political demonstration.

The Mexico of Y Tu Mama Tambien was going through a debt crisis, an uprising on its southern border, and a bloody attempt to unseat the corrupt right wing ruling party. Sometimes the only way to tell a serious story is to pretend it is something else that will prove popular enough for wide distribution. Those who understand will push farther to find the real message.

Sleep Dealer (Mexico 2008, 90 min. dir: Alex Rivera, cast: Luz Martinez, Jacob Vargas, Luis Fernando Pena

Cheap Mexican labor does the work we won’t, but in this futuristic vision we’ve figured out how to use them without ever letting them across the border. Alex Rivera’s ingenious “what if” movie shows a world that is the inheritor of H.G. Wells, “The Time Machine.” In that famous novel, humanity is divided between carefree people who live on the surface of the earth and busy themselves with frivolities; and the lowly workers who live below in lightless caverns. The Morlock,s below, churn out the food and materials that allow the Eloi, above, to be carefree. Only problem: the Morlocks often snuck above at night and ate the Eloi.

Anyone who lives near the Mexican border knows about maquiladores. These are the sweatshop factories built on the other side (the dark side) near border cities. Low-paid Mexicans churn out toasters and table chairs for Wal-Mart. It’s all perfectly legal under the NAFTA treaty. They work for us but we don’t let them in.

Sleep Dealer has gone a step further. Mexicans who want to work are first fitted with metal receptors pierced into their flesh. They can then go to work in giant factories fitted with probes that fit the receptors. Once hooked up and wearing special vision goggles, they find themselves manipulating their arms and legs to control robots up in the US that do anything from baby sitting to picking fruit to working heavy construction.

The perfect solution to immigration! Import only the robots and let the drugged out, sleep deprived Mexicans do the hard labor so they can pay our giant corporations for their water, electricity, and food. Sleep Dealer is a small movie that has a lot to say, and what it says is so condemning that it is amazing so few have seen or listened.