La Llorona (1960)

A newly married couple faces opposition from a family curse. While the wife is petrified, the husband thins it's all nonsense, until one night her father sits him down to tell the whole truth. About the ill-fated romance between Luisa and Spanish nobleman Nuno de Montesclaros, and of the curse of the crying woman...

La Llorona (The Crying Woman) is one of the earlier films based on the famous Mexican legend, and goes about things in an interesting and against type way. Although how much of it is good is up for debate.

The film doesn't waste any time giving us a ponderous speech. It's interesting stuff, even if it's slightly overwritten, and hard to catch all the words, and we get a neat panning shot.

We re first introduced to the romance of Felipe and Margarita, who must convince her father of the marriage, who is convinced the union will only bring the family curse back. Both lovers are firmly against all this mumbo jumbo, until the marriage and birth of their child, when suddenly Margarita is a bundle of nerves. Felipe is surprisingly angry with her, almost dickish, but you understand where he's coming from.

In one scene she deliberately doesn't get ready, and when he asks why not, she's like "Well, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind, and we could play chess, or watch television.". Really, uh-huh. Because when people want to go out, what they really mean is the opposite. Naturally he doesn't take this well, and the father has to intervene by finally telling the family story. Felipe has to be somewhere, but is told this story will only take half an hour. Half an hour, eh? With a magnifying glass and an 800 page codex?

The relationship between Luisa and Nuna in the past is no less dysfunctional. He starts out a smooth conquistador, then a pressuring dickhead who threatens to call the whole relationship quits if she doesn't immediately pledge her undying trust. Then he buggers off for an expedition for 15 months, then years, without telling her, or even meeting her when he's back.

A colleague of his then tries coming onto her quite brazenly, and she should've accepted! It turns out to be a ruse though, to get Nuno an easy divorce so he can marry his new squeeze. "There's no solution now, I'll have to speak with her",  he says, ever the domestic diplomat. Despite having married her, he also gets in a few cracks at her heritage, the racist bastard. Which funny from a modern perspective, where just about everyone in Mexico is Mestizo to some degree.

Luisa grows increasingly bitter, taking her anger out on the kids, proclaiming "These children are the abyss that keeps us apart". Why she doesn't take a knife to Nuno instead is anyone's guess!

You're probably wondering at this point how this is even a horror film! We're getting there. Genre is one of the weirder things about La Llorona. It starts off with a hint of mystery, then the flashback starts and we're tuned into a historical romance drama! It takes 42 minutes in before anything intense happens. It's only when we return to the present day that the titular ghost is finally present. She makes a couple of incredibly halfhearted attempts of little Jorgito's life, fails miserably, and is then banished forever. Felipe and Margarita have long become side characters, but at least they're happy.

Now, I don't think that a horror film is obligated to have a constantly oppressive tone, high body count, or gore just to be considered a horror. And I think La Llorona succeeds in having a big intense event that changes the course of the tone. But I think it fails everywhere else, by having such a lack of scariness for the first couple of acts, and then for being so limp in the last.

As an adaption of the La Llorona legend, this does a pretty poor job. It succeeds in giving us a fleshed out backstory, but at the cost of all else. There's little to really indicate this is the Crying Woman. She doesn't even cry! She's just a pissed off ghost.

As a historical picture, it's neat how this shows an era of Mexico that's pre-revolutionary, where cavalier hats are more common than sombreros. The difference between the local and indigenous culture is shown off really well when we see a tribal dance. It's almost dreamlike, shows how alien the world of these people is to Luisa, despite her indigenous blood being what separates her from the rest of the Spanish crust.

The acting here is pretty good. The young lovers and patriarch in the present do their jobs well. María Elena Marqués is both romantic, dramatic, and intense as the titular villain. She has a great evil stare! Eduardo Fajardo does perfectly at playing a dickhead. So well it's a shame he never gets any comeuppance!

The dialogue here is a high point, with plenty of fun lines, intentionally and otherwise. Like "The weather has sided with you and your horror stories", and the hilarious and dramatic "Holy crucified Jesus!".

The ghostly Luisa tells Jorgito the amusingly creepy "Toys aren't alive, they don't even have blood".

And courtesy of a funny exchange from neighbours: "It's the mother's fault! In my day and age we took care of our children!"-"In your day and age ma'am there were no cars."

La Llorona is a pretty middling horror film, that barely does enough with the genre, especially when compared with 1963s Curse of the Crying Woman. At least it does a couple things well, and is short enough to not be a complete waste of time...