Sociology

Another Cine Latino film: Woodpeckers (Carpinteros). Unsettling but excellent Dominican film entirely focused on Afro-Latino characters. Julián (Jean Jean) is awaiting sentencing when he’s put into one of the “less hellish” prisons in Najayo. That is to say, an overcrowded, filthy and violent place where many prisoners sleep on the concrete floor. Julián is second generation Haitian-Dominican. In a terse exchange with his brother, we learn he is an entrepreneurial “low level” criminal who doesn’t want to be locked into a low-paid menial job.

At CineLatino, the Latin American film festival, I watched, You’re Killing Me Susana, starring Gael Garcia Bernal. As always, his performance is charming and the movie has an abundance of affable comedy. But his character and the story is not endearing. He is an unfaithful and selfish husband who does not take any interest in his wife and her writing. He is disparaging of her teaching, which supplements her writing aspirations. He has repeatedly talked his wife out of going away on writing trips because he is suspicious and jealous.