Más fuerte, Clarice

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Note of intent

During the rewriting process I read a story of a woman who wore earphones not connected to anything as a way to ignore  horrible sexist comments on the streets. It was the same situation as my original script but with a different purpose. A lot has changed -and keeps changing- for women in the last year; all the terrible stories are changing how they see themselves, and hopefully how men see them. This brought back memories of my childhood in a small, but very international oil town, where there was a very standard way on how women should be.

Synopsis

It’s 1995. Clarice (35), a Texan housewife, moves to a small Mexican town near the coast, with her son Evan (7) and her husband Sterling (37) who has been transferred as an expat to work for an oil company. His shifts make him spend entire weeks at the oil fields, while Clarice, a free wanderer spirit, likes to explore the chaotic town and make new friends within the locals specially with Carlos (29) the school’s janitor, who shows her around and asks her out one night. Mike (55), her husband’s boss, sees them together at a bar one night and days later stops by her house for an unexpected visit. He ends up raping her in weird circumstances. After trying to do something about it, Clarice finds out she is completely alone: no one believes in her story. Everyone, even her husband, thinks is her fault. Clarice has to deal with an aftermath of the guilt, shame, powerlessness and vulnerability. 

Visual concept

I’d like to think about memory not only as what is left behind, but also the longing -or wishing- for an ideal situation not happened yet, or never to happen. Before Clarice is raped, she wandered around town with confidence, but after, her walks are paranoid and the situations she sees become images in her process to understand what happened to her and what is her place in her tragedy. The camera will follow her and be her point of view, but sometimes, sound will alter that reality and put tension to the way she deals with the aftermath.