Immigration Law

Movie Discusses Immigration, Focuses On Love

By Robert Kraft

This is the first-ever movie review in this blog, and probably the last, but a new movie got such a good review today in the Dallas Morning News that I wanted to mention it.

Under The Same Moon is directed by Patricia Riggen. Here are excerpts from the Dallas Morning News article:

Anti-immigration talk bubbles to the surface in election years and burbles from the mouth of Lou Dobbs seemingly every minute. It's been a rallying cry from the days of the 19th-century Know Nothing movement to today's skirmishes in Farmers Branch. But for those on the outside, the talk often lacks a human dimension. And that's where movies enter the picture.

Patricia Riggen, Guadalajara-born and Columbia University-educated, hopes her Under the Same Moon, which opens today at the Magnolia and Plano Angelika theaters, can be one of those movies.

On one level, it's the most basic and universal of stories: A child, separated from his mother, embarks on an epic journey to find her. "I want to remind people that it's about the human condition and the separation of loved ones," Ms. Riggen said recently in a Dallas hotel conference room.

But the dividing line of this particular separation is the U.S.-Mexican border. Rosario (Kate del Castillo) has journeyed to Los Angeles to make a living as a domestic. Her young son, Carlitos (Adrian Alonso), remains back home in Mexico with his grandmother – until she dies and the kid decides he needs his mom.

Finding mom. It's an impulse so basic that it makes talk of "illegals" sound like a dry policy debate.

"All of the conversations and controversy are always focused on the economic or political side of immigration and not on the human family side of it," Ms. Riggen says. "That's what I wanted to look at. I didn't want to do a political film. I just wanted to show the human side of this story that we hear every day."

She leaves the obvious unstated: It's harder to hate people once you've walked in their shoes. Even when you walk sitting down in a dark theater.

Movies that put children in jeopardy have to be handled in a delicate manner. There needs to be enough danger for the audience to become invested in the story. Too much danger, and the movie becomes manipulative or even exploitative.

Ms. Riggen's film could have been a forum for a political debate about immigration laws. There are a few mentions, but never enough to distract from the movie's central message: what we will do for love.

For Rosario, it is the willingness to be away from her only son to be able to give him a better standard of living. She shows a real strength when a simple solution to her problem presents itself. But the script by Ligiah Villalobos takes that plotline in a refreshing direction.

It would be easy to dismiss Under the Same Moon as being of interest only for those who understand or care about immigration issues. But the heart of the film is a story of how love can make people move mountains. And that is a universal theme.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).