By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Mexican Jewish film director Sergio Umansky Brenner offers a gritty cry for Mexican justice and compassion in Eight out of Ten, which will be shown June 1 and 2nd at the Hola Mexico Film Festival at the Regal Cinemas Los Angeles, at 1000 W. Olympic Blvd. The film is Spanish language with English subtitles.
After the adult son of Aurelio (Noe Hernandez) is shot down in a plaza, the father goes to the police station to learn if the police have found his killers. First, however, he must stand in a long line to meet with the corrupt police agent (Edward Coward), who assumes without evidence that the young man was involved with drugs, waving aside Aurelio’s protestations that his son never would do anything like that. He asks Aurelio such questions unrelated to solving the murder as “how much do you earn per week?” and “what is your religion?” Aurelio, who works in a textile factory, doesn’t earn very much money. His religion is Catholic. The agent marks all this down indifferently, then sends him to detective Oscar Tamez (Raul Briones), who pulls a file from a stack on his desk and tells Aurelio that all they really know was that his son was killed with a .38 caliber bullet, and that he was carrying flowers.
They must have been for Guadalupe, his son’s bride, who just had their first child, Julieta, Aurelio concludes sadly.
Threaded through the film is video footage of random street murders, far more than the police have either the personnel or the interest in solving.
Aurelio keeps returning to the police station, hoping that there have been developments in the case. Instead of being shown compassion, he is treated as if he is a pest. Why does he keep coming back? He is asked. Why can’t he be patient? Eventually, he confronts the agent, who tells him bluntly, “I don’t care about your son,” adding, “he’s like all the others.”
Detective Tamez isn’t much more helpful, but he provides Aurelio with a piece of information that informs the title of the film. Eight out ten murders in Mexico aren’t even looked into, he said. If Aurelio wants justice, he’ll have to bring more information to the police about the killers. Then perhaps, for a fee, a private form of justice can be delivered to the murderers, Tamez says.
Whether because of grief, or some other emotion, a woman with whom Aurelio has been living demands that he leave their home immediately. He complies and rents a room in a cheap hotel. A prostitute (Daniela Schmidt) lives in the next room. One day he sees her waiting in the rain for a ride to take her to government offices, where she hopes to legally change her name from Norma to Citlali and obtain official identification papers. Aurelio drives her to her appointment, accompanying her inside after she confesses that she is illiterate and doesn’t know how to fill out the forms.
We learns that Citlali had been badly scalded by her husband, from whom she had fled. Her young daughter, scared of what the father might do, had refused to go with her. Now, however, Citlali is determined to get her away from him and to safety. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have enough information, or proof, to satisfy the government officials.
Both having been thwarted by unresponsive officials, Aurelio and Citlali make a pact to pursue their searches for justice together. But in a city where compassion is in short supply, it won’t be easy. Aurelio is a hard worker at the factory, but even after his son’s murder, his boss refuses to give him his back pay, making up one excuse after the other.
While this film is fiction, it addresses Mexico’s very real problems of poverty, exploitation, violence, murders, and especially police corruption. Though it may be a stirring cry for justice, one has the sad feeling that it, like eight out of ten murder victims, is likely to be ignored, no matter how many film festival prizes it might win.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com