Latinbeat and La Misma Luna.

Today sees the opening of the 11th annual Latinbeat festival, sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the newly refurbished Walter Reade Theater (which has been closed for the better part of a month for renovations). Offering a total of 23 films from all over Latin America, Latinbeat's current crop includes work from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador and Costa Rica (the first time Central America will have been represented here), Mexico, Paraguay and Peru - with an encore via Uruguay and some co-production help from the US, Russia, Spain, Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Latinbeat will also offer a sidebar of four "breakthrough" films from Mexico: Amores Perros, Japón, Duck Season and Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening - all of which are now available on video - as well as a one-time screening of Déficit, the first directorial effort from Mexico's most internationally successful male star of current times, Gael García Bernal.

Because Latinbeat (unlike the Film Society's French, Spanish and Italian fests) covers so many countries, viewers can't really get much of a handle on any one of them. But together, the roster provides a filmmaking array that is personal, probing, often political and sometimes more than a bit pretentious. While those adjectives could easily be aimed at films from many spots around the globe, what you won't find elsewhere are the location visuals: from Brazilian beaches unfrequented by tourists (Fish Dreams) to the little-seen landscapes of Ecuador (How Much Further), from haute bourgeoisie Colombia (Bluff) to Cuba's gorgeously decaying architecture (Madrigal), the festival is a feast for eyes hungry for something different and often quite beautiful.

Interestingly enough, Latinbeat premieres with a movie that is about as mainstream and yet satisfying as anything I've encountered while sitting in a seat at the Walter Reade: La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon), a co-production from Mexico and the US to be released simultaneously in both countries next year by Fox Searchlight. If the film's director (Patricia Riggen) and writer (Ligiah Villalobos) understand anything about illegal Mexican immigrants in the US (and I think they understand a lot), it is how and why the various people involved in an immigrant's life respond almost immediately to a simple plea: "Help Me."

Throughout this gripping, funny, sad and charming film, an array of characters help or hinder a young illegal in ways that may surprise viewers, alternately satisfying us then shaking us up. Luna/Moon blends fine acting, directing and writing into a relatively seamless tale of the illegal immigrant experience in America. In this case, the mother is here, sending money earned back to a young son and his grandmother in Mexico. When the Mexican situation suddenly changes, the boy must travel.

Villalobos and Riggen set this up well in terms of necessity and the invention that follows it. They have assembled a fine cast led by young Adrian Alonso (in one of the best child performances I can recall), Kate del Castillo as his mom and Eugenio Derbez as a very grudging surrogate father. The writer and director understand that, where immigration is concerned, people do what they must to survive, and that some people - whether police, INS, or the college-student coyotes played nicely by America Ferrera and Jesse Garcia - are simply doing their job, as unfair, troublesome and sometimes deadly as that job may be. The movie also makes clear, from several perspectives, that getting to US soil safely and remaining there safely are such risks and endurance tests that, once an immigrant has arrived, returning home - even by choice - is not an viable option.

One person's self-sacrifice toward the end takes the film into deeper territory. Our understanding of what has happened at this moment makes the film's conclusion much more moving than it might have been because we come to understand that, as bright, energized and positive any of us might be, our most important goals are usually not achieved on our own. How and with whose help the goals are reached in La Misma Luna makes this movie one of the best in terms of the meaning of immigration - from the POV of the illegal.

This, of course, will not ingratiate it with those who want to see illegals rounded up and disposed of in quick, cheap fashion. But the problem - and, yes, the gift - of immigration has been with this country since its beginning. The manner in which the USA has dealt with it continues to evolve, and La Misma Luna is, in its way, a fine addition to this evolution.

Moments to cherish here are many, among them, a lunch order in a restaurant that encapsulates genetics in a way that's as funny as it is surprising. Yes, the movie is manipulative: Carlitos finds a job awfully easily at that roadside diner, yet young master Alonso's smart performance goes a long way toward making this believable. There is also the usual "balancing" going on: the bad employer against the good, the helpful people against the unhelpful. But when a writer and director manipulate this well (by the time your brain is sending signals of caution, your heart is in your throat and tears are flowing), surrender becomes a kindly option.

The film rises to a climax of almost unbearable tension. Then, instead of providing the clichéd turn we've been awaiting, Riggen and Villalobos focus on something else: Perfectly appropriate to the instant, place and people involved, the image doubles as a symbol for both the subject at hand and the direction it might take. This is a brilliant moment and - given all that's come before - it's the kind that can bring an audience to its feet.

And according to Variety's Justin Chang, La Misma Luna did receive a "rapturous standing ovation" at its Sundance world premiere earlier this year. A spokesperson for the distributor says that this is "the highest-testing film in Fox Searchlight's history," which means it tested even better than an international sensation such as The Full Monty. Although the IMDB earlier proclaimed that the movie would open at the end of September '07, its distributor has now delayed release until March 2008. Why the delay, especially for a movie capable of generating such warm audience rapport? Timing, as they say, is all, and perhaps this fall season is already overcrowded. The debate over immigration will certainly not fade away anytime soon, and certainly not during an election year.

Posted by dwhudson at September 7, 2007 12:47 AM