Films: Mud Flower

Mud Flower
Flor de fango

Mexico, 2011, 100 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Family Issues, Medical/Health, Mexican
Programs: Contemporary World Cinema, Festival de Cine Mexicano
Language: Spanish English Subtitles

DIRECTOR: Guillermo González Montes
Producer: Armando Casas, Roberto Fiesco, Hugo Espinosa
Editor: Ruben Montiel Mendoza
Screenwriter: Guillermo Gonzalez Montes
Cinematographer: Jose Antonio Lendo
Principal Cast: Odiseo Bichir, Claudia Zepeda, Claudia Ramirez

Augusto is lecturing to a group of medical students about the thin line between chance and disorder in an apparently well-structured universe when a phone call from his wife, Ruth, throws his own universe into a tailspin. Ruth’s old nanny is dying, leaving the couple to care for Marlene, a 14-year-old orphaned schoolgirl she had been raising.

It’s quickly apparent that the seemingly innocent and beautiful girl spells trouble. The middle-aged Augusto falls deeply under her seductive spell, his paternal affection for her morphing into lustful obsession. He plans a beachside vacation with her, but before their trip can begin, Ruth discovers the tickets—and Marlene disappears. Augusto suspects the nanny’s son—a low-life, muscular sailor—has abducted her.

Augusto abandons Ruth, his work, and his comfortable life to travel to the rough seaport city of Tampico to find Marlene, his flor de fango (mud flower), and bring her back. Along the way he’s beaten, robbed, threatened, thrown into jail, knifed, and hopsitalized—but the desperate man stops at nothing to find the girl and free her. By this time, however, the wild teenager has exchanged her school uniform and knee socks for miniskirts and spike heels, taking up residency in a brothel. This is one tough drama from Mexican filmmaker Guillermo González Montes.
—JULIET SHERWOOD

Sponsored by Consulate General of Mexico in Denver, Mexican Cultural Center, Wells Fargo

You might also enjoy...

• 

  Animal Town

  South Korea , 2009 , 97 min. Set in modern-day Seoul, Korean writer-director Jeon Kyu-hwan’s drama portrays the lives of two men connected in the past by a horrific event; against the backdrop of bustling optimism, their lives are being destroyed by desperation. Animal Town is the second installment in the Town Trilogy.... more
• 

  El Sicario, Room 164

  USA , 2010 , 80 min. In Gianfranco Rosi's chilling documentary, a nameless former Mexican hitman (or sicario) sits, black-hooded and cold-blooded, in a Juárez hotel room, describing his 20-year career as an executioner and torturer for notorious drug cartels—and revealing the vast corruption in Mexican politics... more
• 

  Good Bye

  Iran , 2011 , 104 min. Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof remains under house arrest in Tehran (he “propagandized” against the regime), but this dramatic cry for freedom has reached the West—a compelling portrait of a disbarred lawyer named Noori who seeks to leave a country where women are treated “like ghosts.”... more
• 

  The Price of Sex

  USA , 2011 , 73 min. Emmy-nominated photojournalist Mimi Chakarova goes undercover to document the trafficking of Eastern European women after the fall of Communism. Poverty makes them targets; forced into prostitution, the women endure harrowing experiences in a network that reaches far beyond their squalid hometowns.... more
• 

  Tyrannosaur

  United Kingdom , 2010 , 93 min. In actor Paddy Considine’s impressive filmmaking debut, an angry widower tangles with a vulnerable Christian woman, who meets his violent outbursts with compassion. Stellar performances anchor this gritty, character-driven drama.... more