Benjamin's Woman

Carlos Carrera was an award-winning animator before he started directing live-action features; his impressive filmography includes Conjugal Life, a festival hit in 1993, and The Crime of Father Amaro, an Oscar nominee in 2003. Benjamin’s Woman, an offbeat, affecting reworking of the Beauty and the Beast legend set in a small Mexican town, was Carrera’s debut feature. Eduardo López Rojas plays titular Benjamin, the town fool, a fifty-year-old bachelor and ex-boxer who lives with his domineering, disagreeable sister. Arcelia Ramírez is Natividad, a beautiful 17-year-old; bored with small-town life and bristling under her mother’s sway, she’s maybe not quite the innocent she appears to be. Benjamin becomes smitten with Natividad and kidnaps her in an effort to win her heart. Natividad, for her part, recognizes her power over her devoted captor, and uses it to her own purposes. The film won Mexico’s Ariel Award for Best First Feature. “Exquisitely realized . . . In the best tradition of Latin American magic realism, Carrera has brilliantly captured the humour, absurdities, delusions, contradictions and imagination of daily life. . . Benjamin’s Woman is a perfectly sculpted gem” (David McIntosh, Toronto I.F.F.). Colour, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 90 mins.