A word about unfortunate guest workers Films about the difficult and sometimes tragic fate of illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States were shot on both sides of the border. It would be absolutely meaningless to single out from their series not the most famous and not the most profound picture of Alberto Mariscal, if it were not for the starring role of Yolanda del Rio. Her Juanita is remembered seriously and for a long time, painting the passage in all other aspects of the tape in bright colors with his temperament, non-standardity and some completely unfictitious, natural provincial angularity, which professional movie stars usually find very, very difficult to play.
Unfortunately, being a craftsman from the cinema, Mariscal could not fully use the dignity of the actress, if at all tried, unpretentiously mixing in his film elements of melodrama, crime drama and “maniac” thriller with Mexican flavor. Thirty years ago, this was probably enough for the national rolling stock, thanks to the fact that the action was characterized by dynamism, and the plot was topical. But today, “Poor Illegals” looks a fair anachronism with its straightforwardness, simple characters and convention of most acting works: the honest and noble manager of the Gumaro plantation, a maniac planter – a necrophile, a sadist and a neo-Nazi in one bottle, Juanita’s broken, cheerful friend – Pyotr’s fat, and so on and so on. Against this background, Yolanda del Rio looks like an alien from another planet, able to breathe life into her cardboard character, make him sympathize and worry.
Her Juanita flees her native fishing village from the hopeless poverty and harassment of the local headman. Having obtained a little money with the faithful and easy-to-lift Petra, the friends move to the States, where they are separated for a short time, fleeing from border control. Juanita was lucky to get to the plantation, where the honest and incorruptible overseer Gumaro runs the affairs, always ready to intercede for his workers and not to offend either the police or even his master. But the noble Gumaro does not even suspect that the women who periodically disappear from the plantation do not return to Mexico and do not run away in search of a better life - they are tortured and killed by his own patron for the satisfaction of their base instincts. But once the choice of the pervert falls on Juanita, and this, as you can guess, becomes his fatal mistake.
Of course, in the process it will be in the film and love – how without it in the burning Mexican genre cinema! Gumaro will love Juanita, she will reciprocate, there will be a class chasm between them with all the ensuing. There will be a bit of a comic line of broken Petra, and a bit of a sadistic thriller with the torture of one of the victims of a malicious sadist, and the machinations of the American Border Patrol. Mr. Mariscal should be given credit - he did not waste a single minute of screen time, trying to saturate the action to the limit. Of course, the vast majority of these events are easy to predict in advance, and all together they look assembled from a ready-made designer, well, no one claimed a masterpiece in this case. The truth behind all this action was initially set social relevance slowly but surely came to naught, leaving those very “poor illegal immigrants” on the periphery of the plot. Well, they were originally just an excuse to start an adventure story. Fortunately, Yolanda del Rio did not realize this, playing her poor Juanita so sincerely and accurately that the film remains in the memory of a little more than he deserves.