La Mujer de Mi Hermano

I find it hard to review foreign movies. They are so… foreign.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother’s Woman) was filmed in Mexico. Interestingly enough, the house our hero and heroine live in has been featured in one of the architectural magazines I read. But that’s an interesting diversion. The film is like a lot of European films—slow and plodding but full of meaning and pathos. It was a long 93 minutes.

The synopsis goes like this: After almost 10 years of marriage, the stunningly attractive Zoe (pronounced Zo-eh) realizes that her marriage to the stunningly attractive Ignacio no longer carries the passion and spark it once had. Boy, I’ll say! Whether it was intentional or not, these two must be the best looking total bores in all of Mexico. Zoe finds herself in the stunningly unattractive arms of Ignacio’s brother, Gonzalo. Gonzalo is a struggling artist (no surprise here) who is the black sheep of the family. He is marked so by his black fingernails, the victims of liberal amounts of black paint in his art.

The sets are fantastic; Zoe and Ignacio are perfect—clothes, hair, makeup. Even the home they live in has clean lines and lots of light. The right angles of the home suit Ignacio’s practiced image to perfection. Gonzalo lives in comparative squalor. He lives for sex and dissipation, neither of which satisfy him. His remedy is to keep trying to get these two things to finally work. His apartment is the biggest victim of his lifestyle.

The habits of life begin to wane in importance as Zoe finds herself in need of a baby. Most of her life with Ignacio has been blessed by wealth due to Ignacio’s headship of his father’s business. As they don’t have any children, it only stands to reason that Zoe’s biological clock is beginning to chime the birthing hour. Conversations with family and friends discuss the couple’s unfortunate dual sterility. The Church plays a large and unapologetic role in the lives of Ignacio and Zoe. I imagine it is so with most all Latin American families. The Church is actually a character in the film.

Their priest does all he can. So does Gonzalo. That’s were the trouble starts. As the marriage dissolves, Zoe confides in the Church for solace. Since the Church can’t do much for her Gonzalo easily seduces her.

Gonzalo, it turns out, has a motive to destroy the marriage. He hates his brother Ignacio. The family's past has ruined Gonzalo’s life as well as his art. We find out why he is the black sheep. We find out why Ignacio and Zoe cannot have children. We discover that Zoe is not as sterile as she thought. Nor is she as passionless as we thought. The Church appears to be unprepared for the consequences of this bad marriage and illicit affair. We also see that Gonzalo ruins not only Ignacio but Zoe and himself. Ironically, the only souls that find redemption are Zoe and Ignacio.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano bills itself as a sexy and dramatic story. It may be sexy, but it is anything but passionate. It is dramatic, and deadly serious. Despite the gorgeous actors, the characters they play only illustrate the emptiness of longing for nothing beyond your own desires, while hiding your true self from others.

Spiritually thinking, La Mujer tells it like it is: Unhappy people don’t always suddenly find happiness. Sometimes they have to make compromises that might do nothing but mute the misery. Ignacio shows himself to be a good man. He stands up for Zoe in her time of greatest need. He has the wherewithal and the resources to take care of her. Despite his miserable life of secrets he at least has the gumption to take responsibility for his actions. He does love her. He just can’t be passionate about her. He shows more love for her by his actions than by words. Many of us wouldn’t do this. Often we spend our time in prayer to the Lord asking for bail. When he doesn’t respond our way, we feel “led� to take matters into our own hands.

Ignacio could have done all this. He has the money, the looks, even the permission in his culture to discard his unfaithful wife. He chooses not to. Because he has finally come clean with who he really is, he is able to sacrifice his needs for the greater good of someone else. Ignacio finds himself and is both liberated and self-constrained by his selfless choice to stay with Zoe.

Gonzalo, on the other hand, whose life Ignacio ruined, can’t reconcile responsibility for himself. Ignacio takes the entire burden of these three pitiful lives and Gonzalo basks in the delusion that he’s once again escaped responsibility.

One wonders by the end of the film just how responsible Gonzalo was for his life choices. But there is no question in the filmmaker's mind that he still has a chance to respond in a constructive way. But old habits die hard.