‘La Llorona’ in Latin American folklore: a ghost who roams the waterfront mourning her drowned children. Cleverly used here by Guatemalan writer/director Jayro Bustamante (too cleverly?) as a way to confront the past sins of an aging Generale, charged with genocide against indigenous peoples, holding out with his family, a guard and housekeeper at his estate after his trial is set aside. Surrounded by hundreds of angry but peaceful chanting demonstrators calling for justice, it’s a relief inside the compound when a new servant joins them, a village girl, helpful, but with a mysterious air about her . . . La Llorona? With exotic beauty & otherworldly presence, María Mercedes Coroy pulls off this impossible near-mythic role, so that what could have been a walking cultural cliché (near silence, inner strength, striking waist-length black silky hair) never loses a human core. Beautifully observed and played on both sides of the camera, there’s unnerving restraint in this haunted tale. Often alarmingly effective, even when some of the players have one too many dramatically convenient nightmares or act in ways designed to move the story along rather than play out character. And a truly great moment when the Generale’s wife and daughter are discussing the accusations so compellingly laid out in the opening courtroom prologue (beautifully shot & designed, with the native women wearing scarves over their faces), his guilt apparent to us and to the daughter, though she can’t admit it to herself. As the mother puts it, ‘I know what you are thinking . . . I FORBID you to think that.’ The truth behind a dictator's power in a nutshell.
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