Carlitos (Adrián Alonso) is nine years old and filled to the brim with spunk and cuteness. He is the ideal protagonist in a movie about immigration issues in America. His mother is Rosario (Kate del Castillo), an illegal immigrant working in Los Angeles while her son is stuck in Mexico. Every Sunday, religiously, she will call him from the same phone booth to send well wishes and sprinklings of optimism his way. Carlitos lives with his grandmother, who abruptly dies, sending the little tyke on a mission to find his mother in the city of Los Angeles. He evades border patrol, traffickers, and seedy neighborhoods all in the pursuit of love and affection.
Under the Same Moon (La misma luna) is an independent movie dealing with a huge social-issue the way a Hollywood movie would. It milks all the sentiment and tears this story can produce in record time. It's the kind of easily-digestible American audiences can stomach while at the same time not feeling so guilty or too depressed.
The issue of immigration and the fact that a countless number of families have been separated because of it is one that can be taken under the wing of cinema, if approached pragmatically and cautiously. Under the Same Moon goes for the easy-way-out, neglecting to humanize the issue but humanize a certain far-fetched, nearly unbelievable storyline, portraying many of the Mexican characters as punching bags and the whites as stuffy cads who do not respect anyone not in their social class. There's truth to both of those archetypes, but should a film attempting to look at the issue of immigration and its effects on people be settling for such perfunctory features? It's a blessing to say that Adrián Alonso is an audacious little lead for a film like this. I can forgive his placement more as an emotional cause-and-effect case for the fact that he handles heavy material extremely well. His illumination on screen carries the entire film in terms of the kind of vibe it sets off. In the later scenes, when he meets a certain figure who has been lacking in his life (I'm sure you can figure out who it is) is when a character begins to emerge. It's a character that isn't as naive or as clueless as we may've believed. It's a character with maybe a little less innocence than we previously thought.
The take-away information from Under the Same Moon is the fact that kids of illegal parents have experienced a whirlwind of trouble, hardships, and disappointment in the first ten years of their life than privileged youths will likely experience in thirty. This is a gruelingly honest point that the film tries to make. I'm a fan of the message but not so much the delivery. I tire of a story that paints one side as blameless victims and the other as the enablers or the bystanders that refuse to step in even during the gloomiest times. It's this kind of painting in not just cinema but politics in general that is detrimental to the credibility of an issue. We must look at both sides of the argument. In this case, perhaps each party is a bit too oversimplified.
Movies like Under the Same Moon provide audiences with a pleasant diversion and competent family entertainment. This is not a story that a strong political thesis can be extracted from. The film offers solid performances, a pleasant culture shock, a conservatively-paced story, and characters we at least want to see turn out well in some way or another. The film is just all too "nice" about everything and never really seems to up the courage and dive into deeper reasons for deeper problems. The talking points you're left with are ones usually taken in-context to newspaper articles or present issues in the field of the topic; not from the actual film.
Starring: Adrián Alonso, Kate del Castillo, and Eugenio Derbez. Directed by: Patricia Riggen.
Under the Same Moon (La misma luna) is an independent movie dealing with a huge social-issue the way a Hollywood movie would. It milks all the sentiment and tears this story can produce in record time. It's the kind of easily-digestible American audiences can stomach while at the same time not feeling so guilty or too depressed.
The issue of immigration and the fact that a countless number of families have been separated because of it is one that can be taken under the wing of cinema, if approached pragmatically and cautiously. Under the Same Moon goes for the easy-way-out, neglecting to humanize the issue but humanize a certain far-fetched, nearly unbelievable storyline, portraying many of the Mexican characters as punching bags and the whites as stuffy cads who do not respect anyone not in their social class. There's truth to both of those archetypes, but should a film attempting to look at the issue of immigration and its effects on people be settling for such perfunctory features? It's a blessing to say that Adrián Alonso is an audacious little lead for a film like this. I can forgive his placement more as an emotional cause-and-effect case for the fact that he handles heavy material extremely well. His illumination on screen carries the entire film in terms of the kind of vibe it sets off. In the later scenes, when he meets a certain figure who has been lacking in his life (I'm sure you can figure out who it is) is when a character begins to emerge. It's a character that isn't as naive or as clueless as we may've believed. It's a character with maybe a little less innocence than we previously thought.
The take-away information from Under the Same Moon is the fact that kids of illegal parents have experienced a whirlwind of trouble, hardships, and disappointment in the first ten years of their life than privileged youths will likely experience in thirty. This is a gruelingly honest point that the film tries to make. I'm a fan of the message but not so much the delivery. I tire of a story that paints one side as blameless victims and the other as the enablers or the bystanders that refuse to step in even during the gloomiest times. It's this kind of painting in not just cinema but politics in general that is detrimental to the credibility of an issue. We must look at both sides of the argument. In this case, perhaps each party is a bit too oversimplified.
Movies like Under the Same Moon provide audiences with a pleasant diversion and competent family entertainment. This is not a story that a strong political thesis can be extracted from. The film offers solid performances, a pleasant culture shock, a conservatively-paced story, and characters we at least want to see turn out well in some way or another. The film is just all too "nice" about everything and never really seems to up the courage and dive into deeper reasons for deeper problems. The talking points you're left with are ones usually taken in-context to newspaper articles or present issues in the field of the topic; not from the actual film.
Starring: Adrián Alonso, Kate del Castillo, and Eugenio Derbez. Directed by: Patricia Riggen.