Selection:
Director:
Country:
- United States
- Mexico
Format:
Type:
Film exhibited in Toulouse:
Oscuridad - Fiction short film competition
Foreseen cast:
Ixchel Flores Machorro
Teresa Sanchez
Edward Coward
Mónica del Carmen
Script writer(s):
Synopsis:
Valladolid, México (1750's). When Elena, a widow with syphilis, remarries Servando, a well known pig farmer, her symptoms suddenly worsen before her wedding day. She secretly finds a doctor to apply a mercury therapy, but when she arrives at Servando’s pig farm after the ceremony with her children and her maid Teresa, she has not recovered and knows she must keep her body hidden from her new husband. The worse her disease gets and the longer she cannot consummate the marriage, the further she pushes Servando from confusion into a deep anxiety that he cannot control. When he murders Teresa’s son, Elena takes her revenge by finally consummating the marriage in complete darkness. And in surrendering to the disease, she becomes a conduit for the power of Coatlicue, the Mexican mother goddess.
© Jorge Sistos Moreno
Visual concept:
The greatest absence in La Ausencia is that of the indigenous traditions of my home region, but the purpose of the story is to show their real power. The style of the movie will reflect the Catholic baroque of the eighteenth century, both by starting with a marriage in a church and through the calm naturalism of the camera. But the power of nature and of indigenous beliefs, embodied by the Mexican mother goddess Coatlicue, will ultimately prove stronger than these transplanted European beliefs.
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