Rating: C
Dir: Omar Jacobo
Star: Génesis Arista, Imelda Castro, Agustín Elizondo, Roberto Mendez
a.k.a. La Puta Es Ciega
Not to be confused with classic bad movie, Blood Freak, and nor with Bloodsucking Freaks. Though it does share with the latter, a murderous midget. This is, instead, a rare entry which can only be filed in the “WTF” category. It’s out there, in a trans-dimensional space beyond trivial concepts like “good” or “bad”. Jacobo clearly went out there with a plan. I do not know what that plan was, so cannot say if he succeeded. I did not like the results, which treat narrative as a communicable disease. I did not enjoy its deliberately rough approach to both sound and vision. Yet it held my attention better than I feared.
It begins with a blind hooker, dressed as a schoolgirl, killing a punter in a Mexico City back alley. The original title, which translates as The Whore is Blind, suddenly made sense. She goes back to her apartment, which she shares with her lesbian lover, and who may or may not be trying to poison her. They like to make out in front of the milkman, because why not? I will admit I’ve never before seen cunnilingus shot from a point of view, somewhere up around the cervix. Meanwhile, upstairs, dominatrix Muriel (Castro) and her mullet-wearing midget, Lux Inferior (Mendez) – okay, I laughed at that name for a little person – are slowly dismembering a woman’s body in a bathtub. For the purposes of taxidermy?
None of this makes any real sense. For instance, towards the end, the milkman seems to suffer food poisoning, and rushes upstairs to the bathroom. There, the dwarf, irate at being interrupted, cuts the milkman’s throat and climbs out the window. But a couple of minutes later, the milkman staggers downstairs as a talking zombie, turns on a ghetto blaster, and a punk band suddenly shows up and starts playing. It’s the kind of zany and wacky antics, almost intended to annoy the hell out of me, especially when a lot of it has a needless, VHS digital filter applied – y’know, tracking lines, etc. There’s a reference to Coldplay. Yeah, Jacobo seems like the kind of guy who would wear a fedora. Indoors.
His influences are not exactly subtle. John Waters. David Lynch. Alejandro Jodorowsky. None of them exactly among my favourite film-makers, and there were times where the siren call of scrolling on my cellphone was difficult to resist. The film opens with an exhortation to play it loud, and that might help stave off sleep. Yet, weirdly, the longer it went on, the more I found myself… I wouldn’t exactly say “engrossed in proceedings.” However, reaching the level of”taking notice” has to be considered something of an achievement, given how little there is in conventional terms, to hook onto. I don’t want to see it again, and won’t be seeking out other work by Jacobo. Grudgingly, though, I must admit this definitely will not be forgotten anytime soon.