Artículo completo en Sense of cinema
Journeys and Destinations: The Films of María Novaro
María Novaro is widely considered to be the most successful director to have emerged out of a flourish of female talent in the Mexican film industry since the 1980s. With four features and eleven short films to her credit, she is certainly the most prolific. Novaro's reputation as an original talent was secured when in 1991 her second feature Danzón was warmly received by the Director's Section of the Cannes Film Festival. The film was also featured at other festivals, including Havana where Novaro was named best director, and Chicago and Valladolid where the female lead, María Rojo, won Best Actress honours. After commercial release in Europe and the U.S., Danzón went on to make a box office profit in Mexico, rare for an "arthouse" release.
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Novaro's subsequent feature El Jardín del Edén (The Garden of Eden, 1994) was an ambitious, ensemble piece which continues her exploration of themes such as motherhood and female friendship, however, set in Tijuana, its central concern is that of borderlands. Novaro presents various aspects of the borderland experience via four female figures: a white American traveler, a Chicana curator, an indigenous woman and a widowed mother of three. As the critic Maldonado points out, this strategy does not allow for rounded characterization so we are left with broadly drawn types. (5) Rashkin argues that, similarly, the setting of Tijuana is presented as a place emblematic of borderlands rather than as a realistic city where real lives take shape. (6) The film does overstretch its reach and remains somewhat mired down in abstraction. It was not successfully received critically or commercially.
© Romy Sutherland, November 2002
Endnotes:
Elena Poniatowska, Nada, Nadie: Las voces del temblor, Mexico City, Era, 1998, p. 45
Daniela Michel, “Entrevista con María Novaro”, Milenio, 24 May, 1992
Victor Bustos, “María Novaro: De Lola a Danzón”, Dicine 40, July 1991, p. 10
Margo Glantz, “Danzón: Los Pies de las Mexicanas”, Nitrato de Plata 17, 1994, pp. 18-21
Veronica Maldonado, review of El Jardín del Edén, Dicine 65, January-February 1996, pp. 26-27
Elissa Rashkin, Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream, Texas, University of Texas Press, 2001, p. 190
Poniatowska, 1998, p. 47
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