La Llorona (2019)

La Llorona is a ghost out of Mexican folklore that hangs out, by reputation, near bodies of water, howling and mourning for her drowned children. There are lots of versions of the story and how the children came to be drowned and actually there are even lots of movies too, going all the way back at least to a 1933 La Llorona, a Mexican picture. Lately there has been a spate of them, perhaps connected to an appearance in Pixar’s Coco of the Mexican folk song about the business, “La Llorona.” Wikipedia details a specifically Guatemalan version of the La Llorona story so it shouldn’t be a surprise that a Guatemalan, director and cowriter Jayro Bustamante, stepped up with his own take. It made the rounds of film festivals a few years ago and remains worth a look. This version of the tale takes an interesting political bent, with a former dictator who has been forced from office, brought to trial for genocide and convicted, and then his sentence commuted by the country’s supreme court. No doubt they were more interested in looking forward, not backward. This dictator figure, played by Julio Diaz, is called Enrique Monteverde here, but he is based on the real-life Guatemalan dictator in 1982 and 1983, Efraín Ríos Montt, who faced his own charges of war crimes and genocide. The movie takes place soon after his conviction has been set aside, when Montaverde and his family (wife, daughter, granddaughter, servants, and security) repair to their home where they are virtual prisoners. The action is mostly interior but constantly punctuated by chants and calls from the crowds that gather daily to protest him. Sometimes they throw stones and break windows. The swimming pool is strewn with wanted posters for him, tossed over the fence. Even most of the servants have given up and taken off. But the need for servants is still there and one day a woman shows up ready to work, and with experience—Alma, played by an otherworldly Maria Mercedes Coroy. Later her credentials turn out to be falsified but she’s in the household by then. This La Llorona skillfully blends the horrors and depredations of Latin American death squads and repressive right-wing regimes with the La Llorona legend. Julio Diaz is nearly perfect as Monteverde, still a monster after all these years, with a little bristly mustache, an omnipresent sidearm, and bottomless horndog notions. I admit this La Llorona feels a bit like a film festival usual suspect, but don’t hold that against it.