il film racconta la storia di Roberto, che lascia moglie e figlia per un po' di soldi.
Roberto è uno che vuole solo lavorare per loa famiglia, trova un mondo di disperazione, di inganni e di tentazioni, e tanti come lui.
quasi un documentario, a volte, un film da non perdere - Ismaele
…Roberto Ramirez (Domingo Ambriz) is a young married
field hand in a rural area of Michoacán, Mexico, whose wife just gave birth to a
daughter. Afraid he can't support his family, Roberto goes north, crossing the
border to California, where the non-English-speaking illegal hopes to
make enough money in a year to return to support his family. Of note, his mom
reminds him that his father went north and mysteriously never returned. After
eluding an immigration police raid while he works at picking fruit,
Roberto hooks up with Mexican colleagues to survive and lives in a chicken
coop. Joe (Trinidad Silva) acts as the innocent Roberto's mentor and teaches
him how to smile for the gringos and order coffee, ham and eggs for breakfast.
The illegal Roberto and Joe
become sidekicks and ride a freight to Stockton, but get separated. When the
exhausted fruit picker with no place to live, Roberto, falls asleep in the
luncheonette, near Stockton, the sweet waitress gringo single-mom Sharon (Linda
Gillen) feels sorry for him and takes him home. They become lovers and Sharon
teaches him English, how to send a money order home, and takes the
fish-out-of-water to an evangelist Sundayrevival meeting and, he goes for
the first time, to a department store. But just as quickly as they met, they
depart when he's troubled by the immigration police and has become homesick.
The two will not even have a chance to say goodbye to each other, as they
separate for good…
…Young does a fairly
good job in exploring Roberto’s plight with sensitivity and honest
insight. His struggles are sympathetic, and Abriz’s performance is
fine. Not great, but fine. At times Roberto seems to be a bit
of a blank slate, and we don’t understand what motivates him to do certain
things. The film also seems to be marking off a certain checklist of
scenarios it needs to cover, although perhaps you could level the same complaint
at El Norte.
The film has a documentary-ish style that gives it a
neorealist edge. This is undercut by some of the scoring choices,
however. It opens with an absolutely lovely melody on acoustic guitar,
but in other places the music is pretty goofy and jarring…
…The story soon becomes
one of survival, as he endures and escapes one random set of dire circumstances
after another without feeling contrived or stopping for cheap sentimental
tricks. Roberto even makes a certain selfish choice, but at the time, after what
he’s been through, who could blame him?
Roberto speaks no English and there are big stretches of the movie where he
doesn’t speak at all. This causes us to further identify with him and it makes
the moments of chaos and confusion come alive. ¡Alambrista! is
an intimate film, mixing in non-actors in actors in situations that rarely feel
scripted…
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