La Virgen de la Lujuria (2000)

Synopsis: Lauded Mexican director Arturo Ripstein is widely held to be the most innovative and talented auteur currently at work in his country. With a long list of credits to his name that delve... Lauded Mexican director Arturo Ripstein is widely held to be the most innovative and talented auteur currently at work in his country. With a long list of credits to his name that delve unflinchingly into the gritty intricacies of humanity, often introducing a new take on genre conventions, he got his illustrious start as the assistant director on the set of Luis Bunuel's EXTERMINATING ANGEL. This stylistic, intentionally stagy melodrama is set in 1940s Vera Cruz, largely in the Cafe Ofélia; it follows a complacent waiter, Nacho (Luis Felipe Tovar, SUCH IS LIFE), an indigenous Mexican who suffers the abuse of the cafe's manager--who boasts loudly of his Spanish origins--by day, and passes his nights with his extensive porn collection. He encounters a beautiful, sexually rapacious, and politically radical prostitute named Lola (Ariadna Gil, CAMERA OBSCURA), and falls unconditionally in love with the amoral opium addict. They enter into a sadomasochistic but non-physical relationship; he fetishizes her lace glove while she dreams of her true love, a masked wrestler named Gardenia. Nacho finally begins to entertain fantasies of killing Spanish dictator Franco, thus winning Lola's heart once and for all. [More]

Starring: Ariadna Gil, Luis Felipe Tovar, Juan Diego, Julian Pastor

Starring: Ariadna Gil, Luis Felipe Tovar, Juan Diego, Julian Pastor

Director: Arturo Ripstein

Director: Arturo Ripstein
Producer: Mate Cantero, Jorge Clemente, Alvaro Garnica

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