La Misma Luna.

"To all the people who think that the illegal immigration debate is about electronic fences, NAFTA, Lou Dobbs and such, director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos offer a polite but emphatic rebuttal," writes Reed Johnson in the Los Angeles Times. "Immigration, say the women, is about survival. It's about learning to be invisible. It's about families. It's about love."

"In La Misma Luna [Under the Same Moon] and in several other recent American and European films, one senses "a feeling that migration is the symptom of a large-scale social crisis rather than the individual solution to an economic or political problem," writes AO Scott.

Updated through 3/24.

But also in the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis writes, "Like Cinema Paradiso and its tyke-centered ilk, Under the Same Moon places all its marketing eggs in the cute-kid basket, a container to which American art-house audiences seem particularly drawn.... If only predictability were the worst of it."

"Under the Same Moon aims to get audiences to blubber at the trials of mother and child but doesn't persuasively put convincing flesh on people caught in the immigration firestorm," writes Bill Weber in Slant.

Michelle Orange in the Voice: "Firing off a deluge of immigrant-hardship vignettes with the thudding consistency of a tennis-ball machine, Under the Same Moon presents a genre somewhat at odds with itself: the gritty fable."

For Michael Joshua Rowin, writing at indieWIRE, there's room "within Under the Same Moon's predictable trajectory for a few surprisingly effective emotional moments, but the film as a whole betrays the somber authenticity of its subjects' dire situations with unbelievable and sentimental contrivances."

"Riggen attempts to show the enormous hardship illegals immigrants face, but the actual storytelling is so filled with sunshine and resilient good cheer that true pathos of the situation never rings true," writes Marcy Dermansky.

"[T]his largely Spanish-language film brings on the waterworks because its core story is undeniably affecting," writes Kenneth Turan in the LAT. "The whole movie, however, would be more convincing if the elements around that vital core were more multidimensional and less contrived."

"For all its flaws, Under the Same Moon pushes back against prejudice with an exercise in empathy," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun.

For Filmmaker, Damon Smith talks with Riggen "about the timeliness of La Misma Luna, the politics of acting in Mexico, and why Latino filmmakers working in the States need to maintain an independent voice."

Earlier: James Van Maanen, who's also interviewed Patricia Riggen.

Update: "The use of paralleling narratives in which the main characters, unbeknownst to each other, take actions that are in fact contrary to their common goal - one of them zigging while the other zags, with the audience saying 'No!' all along the way - is a strategy more common to the screwball comedy or suspense film than the heart-tugging family drama," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "But it turns out to be one of the strengths of Moon, making it a little more unconventional than the average heart-tugging family drama."

Updates, 3/24: "This "story about a Mexican mother and son yearning for each other across the border is at its best as a personal story rather than a political tract, but it's so tied to stereotypes and broad contrivance that there's little room for honest emotion to leak through," writes the AV Club's Tasha Robinson.

"The movie has a picaresque quality that may remind you, at its best and loosest, of Fellini," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "It pulls at your heartstrings without shame, but without tricks, either."

Posted by dwhudson at March 19, 2008 3:03 PM