Product Description
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In her feature film debut; director Patricia Riggen weaves their
parallel stories into a vividly textured tapestry of yearning and
devotion that portrays a child's courage and tenacity; and a
mother's sacrifice. Nine-year-old Carlos aka Carlitos (Alonso) is
one of the countless children left behind by parents who come to
the U.S. seeking a way to provide for their families. His mother;
Rosario (del Castillo) has worked illegally as a domestic in Los
Angeles for four years; sending money home to her son and mother
to give them a chance at a better life. When the death of his
grandmother leaves young Carlitos alone; he takes his e into
his own hands and heads north across the border to find his
mother. As he journeys from his rural Mexican village to the L.A.
barrio; Carlitos faces seemingly insurable obstacles with a
steely determination and unfettered optimism that earn him the
grudging respect and affection of a reluctant protector; a
middle-aged migrant worker named Enrique (Derbez). The unlikely
pair finds its way from Tucson to East L.A.; but the only clue
Carlitos has to his mother's whereabouts is her description of
the street corner from which she has called him each Sunday for
the last four years. Unaware that Rosario is only hours away from
returning to Mexico to be with her son; Carlitos and Enrique
desperately comb the vast unfamiliar city for a place he has seen
only in his imagination.
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Under the Same Moon puts a human face--several very appealing
faces--on the dilemma of Mexican "illegals" living and working
clandestinely in the United States and the loved ones back home
they're supporting. Rosario, a young single parent, left her
village four years ago and jumped the border to find work in Los
Angeles; ever since, she and son Carlitos, now nine, haven't seen
each other, but she faithfully calls him from the same
street-corner pay phone every Sunday morning. When Rosario's
mother--the boy's guardian--dies in her , Carlitos taps into
an impressive reservoir of street smarts and contrives his own
border crossing. The border is just the first of many obstacles
to a mother-and-child reunion--not least the fact that the only
address the boy has for Rosario is a mental image of the corner
she always phones from.
It's easy to take cheap s at Patricia Riggen's
feature-directing debut for tugging at the heartstrings, and
certainly Under the Same Moon aspires to nothing like the
political and psychological complexity of The Visitor, another
film involving illegal immigrants that was released around the
same time. But that misses the point, the nature of the mission,
and the effectiveness with which Riggen carries it out. Carlitos
encounters an almost Dickensian gallery of rogues and menaces,
but that's allegorically appropriate for a crossover film (pun
unavoidable) ed at the general U.S. market as well as the
Latino circuit. Nor is the movie guilty (as some have charged) of
flogging an Anglo-bad/Latino-good poetics; there's rtunism as
well as love among Carlitos's neighbors back home, and although
Rosario is exploited and cheated by one of the two L.A.
households she serves as a maid, the other family appears fond,
even solicitous of her.
Riggen's casting is on the money: Kate del Castillo makes a
heartbreakingly lovely Rosario, and Adrián Alonso, in addition to
giving a gutsy performance as Carlitos, has a marvelous old-man's
face the camera never tires of. Veteran actress María Rojo
creates a shrewd portrait of a woman who arranges border
crossings and observes her own brand of ethics while doing so,
and Eugenio Derbez brings raffish charm to a crowd-pleasing role,
a guest worker who, though himself two leaps ahead of "La Migra,"
becomes Carlitos's reluctant protector. America Ferrara (yes,
"Ugly Betty") contributes an unflattering cameo as a U.S. college
student of Hispanic descent who doesn't understand Spanish.
--Richard T. Jameson