Mexico's award-winning 'Divine' breathes originality

Tony Ryanto, Contributor, Jakarta

For the last five years, Indonesian movie buffs have continued to avail themselves of the opportunity to view well-done foreign films not screened here theatrically.

Currently enjoying popularity are classics from Iran and Mexico.

Three Mexican films, all directed by Arturo Ripstein, are featured in this year's Jakarta International Film Festival or JiFFest, its fifth edition, from Oct. 14 to Oct. 19 at H. Usmar Ismail Film Center, Goethe Institute and Erasmus Huis.

The trio are Divine (1998), Such is Life (2000) and The Ruination of Men (2000).

Ripstein, 57, is considered one of Mexico's most celebrated and respected filmmakers, most likely the only one having inherited the mantle of world famous Spanish director Luis Bunuel (1900-1983). In a career spanning over 30 years, the Mexican film director has become a filmmaker whose works have an international impact.

His films are much awaited by the press, critics and the public as well. His name lends credibility. He has no difficulty attracting major stars and getting his projects financed. His wife, script-writer Paz Alizia Garciadiego, has been a staunch collaborator in about a dozen pictures.

Divine was named Best Picture at the 1999 Mexican Film Festival in Guadalajara. It was invited to the 1998 Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals.

The story of a bizarre religious community headed by an exiled elderly priest, Papa Basilio (Francisco Rabal), and his prophetess wife, Mama Dorita (Katy Jurado), Divine, in the words of Ripstein himself, was tailor-made for the millennium.

It was inspired by something that really happened in Mexico 15-16 years ago.

Not surprisingly, Divine has touches of Bunuel, particularly in the mixture of the sacred and profane. And like Bunuel, Ripstein sometimes makes governments uneasy and moviegoers shocked and speechless.

Comprising a number of episodes, Divine, in its early footage, has a scene depicting Nelida, a prostitute, serving her customer, a middle-aged man. Considered distressing is the intensity and viciousness with which the man afterwards kills himself in front of the terrified woman.

Next sequence is an encounter between Nelida and Tomasa, a street-wise teenage girl. Both are waiting for the end of the world and the best place to go, according to the younger woman, is a religious community in a secluded plateau high in the mountains.

Far away from civilization, the inhabitants of the religious sect are free to develop their own dreamland, which is oddly influenced by the biblical epics of Hollywood in the 1950s.

Papa Basilio is an ardent fan of Charlton Heston, who plays Moses in Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.

In no time do audiences realize that it is Mama Dorita, and not Papa Basilio, that holds the supreme power. And this dying woman, who often cheats at dominoes, names Tomasa to be her successor.

But once Tomasa becomes the leader, the community starts to disintegrate because of her perversity. Thinking that she is a saint, she is determined to purge men of their lustful sins. This is done by cohabitation -- all the while imagining that technically she retains her virginity.

It is this part of the film, according to one critic, that is the most fascinating. To Ripstein, the 1998 movie is "The sum and compendium of 33 years in the motion picture industry."

The chaotic situation leads to mob murder. The victim is a transvestite who has just discovered that he is a virile young man and his savior is Tomasa. Having lost his power, Papa Basilio chides the priestess, who eventually realizes that she has made a fatal mistake.

After all, she is not a saint but a common prostitute like Nelida, who left the encampment after the two find out they fall for the same young man.

What once was a relatively meek, easy-to-handle and harmless group of worshipers is transformed into a destructive force that lets loose the horrors of madness the moment they find out their dreamworld is falling to pieces.

To Indonesians having seen Katy Jurado in Fred Zinneman's 1952 western classic High Noon (playing Gary Cooper's old flame), it is both a shock and a surprise. Shocked because physically she has changed a great deal and surprised because her acting talents are forever young.

Carolina Papaleo plays Tomasa. Playing the third lead in the film, she is not disappointing because she has the ability to balance the acting of both Jurado and Rabal.

Often, the scenes in Divine remind us of beautiful paintings. Like one critic says: "Even without understanding what Ripstein exactly wants to express and pinpoint, the spectacular sequences breathe originality and this alone sustains and captures interest." Divine to be screened at 2:30 p.m. at GoetheHause, Jl. Sam Ratulangi 9-15 Central Jakarta, Tel. (021) 235-50208.