Arrancame la Vida by Roberto Sneider

Between the meticulous mise en scène of mexican society after its 1910s revolution and the enigmatic portrait of a woman who opens a wound in her chauvinistic environment, Arrancame la Vida (Tear my heart out) wants to provoke something. The film crosses the corridors of the Mexico of the 30s and 40s with the story of Catalina Guzman (Ana Claudia Talancon), a young girl of a poor rural family who falls in love with conniving, calculating general Andrés Asensio (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). Catalina not only represents the mexican bourgeoisie: she is essentially another body, a feminine body, a body which constructs its own discourse.

The ways in which this woman breaks with the system from its deeper axis (masculinity) are considerably complex. At first she seems to repeat a model, to assume an imposed role. But this imposition crumbles when Catalina turns towards another man - although she is not unfaithful in the way in which Andrés is. Falling in love with a certain freedom, she is finally able to breathe outside of her straitjacket.

When talking about freedom and mexican history becomes a discussion about women, it’s a controversial move. To subordinate masculine history to Catalina’s story and construct her as a woman -not as a female, nor as a mother- is the real gamble of this film.

Mary Carmen Molina Ergueta