![]() Having no one else in the world, she has no option but to stay with this drunken and recently widowed old man, and confront the ghosts of the past that haunt them both. He lives there with an enigmatic Haitian as his only companion. She finds her father, Joaquín, living in a dark, old house in the middle of an abandoned banana plantation, which the locals claim is haunted by spirits. She travels to a nearby town taking what few belongings she has. La hija natural ( Love Child) centers on María, young woman with the strange habit of putting ladybugs in her mouth, who, after her mother dies in an accident, decides to look for the father she has never met. If director Paniagua’s name is familiar, it may be because, last summer, we profiled her last film, La Hija Natural ( Love Child), when it was set to be the Centerpiece film at the Caribbean Tales Film Showcase in Toronto. Surely there can be no going back for Cristo Rey after Jocelyn has deathlessly whispered to Janvier to “take her with him to the end of the world”.According to TIFF’s write-up, the film is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set in the Dominican Republic.ĭirected by Leticia Tonos Paniagua, and titled Cristo Rey, the drama follows the relationship between a kind-hearted teenager, ostracized for his mixed Haitian-Dominican descent, and the beautiful sister of a local drug kingpin he’s hired to protect.Ĭristo Rey stars James Saintil, Akari Endo, and Yasser Michelén, and will be making its World Premiere at TIFF next month. And there are thriller elements too, as the gorgeously overweight and immobile El Baca issues instructions to his sidekick Pedro Lee (the again very watchable Moises Trinidad.)īut predominant, at least through the film’s second half, is that 50s teen romance element, and it’s this which hobbles the film. (It is neatly echoed at the end by something far more melancholy.) There’s social realism in some of the sequences shot in these tumbledown, poverty-ridden streets, with the script making at least some effort to tackle issues of anti-Haitian sexism and racism, as in one scene in which Jocelyn thoughtlessly washes a glass from which Janvier has drunk. The opening sequence seems to come from a vibrant, Stamp-style musical, as neighborhood folks pick up anything lying to hand and beat out rhythms. Tonally, Cristo Rey fails to cohere, as the script feels more in thrall to teen rebellion movies than it does to the specific details of life. The excessive use of rap music sounds more like a stylistic visiting card rather than emerging naturally. The visuals are vibrant, colorful and rarely suggestive of anything resembling authentic poverty. The characters are often wonderful, but less so the performances from a largely newcomer cast, and Janvier is rather dull. Also, it’s not clear why Janvier and Rudy are half brothers, unless the script wants to point out that blood should be thicker than water: something that really doesn’t need to be pointed out. As the film goes on, it’s the cliches of melodrama which come to the fore, undoing a lot of good work earlier on. ![]() Because Janvier and Rudy, for example, are half-brothers, the sons of Mon (the powerfully charismatic Arturo Lopez) by different women. And it’s here that the telenovela structure beneath the surface of Cristo Rey starts to become clear. Joceyln’s ex Rudy ( Yasser Michelen) is naturally not happy about this. So when local drugs lord El Baca (the physically mighty Leonardo Vasquez) hires him to be a bodyguard for his sister Jocelyn ( Akari Endo), Janvier’s all too happy. ![]() Janvier ( James Saintil) is one of many Haitian immigrants living illegally in Cristo Rey, a poor neighborhood in Santo Domingo: the film’s analysis of the explicit racism suffered by Haitians at the hands of Dominicans on the island the two countries share is one of the subtler things about it, a racism embodied in the figure of nasty local cop, Mantilla ( Jaisen Santana). Janvier’s mother is back in Haiti and as a virtuous son, Janvier’s looking to raise cash to get back to see her. But despite the heavy intentions promised by its opening, Cristo Rey is only intermittently more than a standard street romance, like a clunky Caribbean version of an early Springsteen song. ![]() ![]() Teeming with good intentions and shot through with a freshness which goes some way towards redeeming its flaws, Leticia Tonos’ follow-up to the superior The Natural Daughter, the first Dominican film to be directed by a woman alone, does well to portray the racial tensions of life in this Santo Domingo slum. Ambition outweighs execution in Cristo Rey, a Santo Domingo-set racism drama that starts out with real punch and drive before settling down into cliche. ![]()
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