"Noirsville Hell"Directed by Arturo Ripstein.
Written buy Paz Alicia Garciadiego, and based on the story by Guy de Maupassant The excellent seedy Cinematography was by Ángel Goded and Music by Lucía Álvarez.
The film stars Evangelina Sosa as Perla, Alonso Echánove as Rufino, Damián Alcázar as Marro, Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Tomasa, Alejandro Parodi as Carmelo, and Ernesto Yáñez as Eneas.
This award winning film is the third adaption of Guy de Maupassant's story in Mexican cinema. This go round the story is told in a similar fashion to Rashomon (1950), from three perspectives. El Marro's, Perla's, and Tomasa's.
Perla is a teen singer/dancer/prostitute in a waterfront dive bar/ "cabaretera" whorehouse in the basement of the sleazy El Eneas hotel in Veracruz. Tomasa is Perla's mother an all purpose scum-swabber employee of Eneas the pimp, who runs the brothel. Carmelo is a gifted pianist who's only options in life was a choice of either cleaning toilets or playing the piano and being the MC for Eneas.
Eneas sort of reminds you of Jeff Bridges Lebowski character, or a very seedy Huge Hefner, He runs around constantly in a striped bathrobe.
We get our story from three different viewpoints.
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When El Marro gets to the powerhouse he collapses again but he gives Carmelo some of the money he as to get him a doctor. The doctor tells Carmelo that El Marro will recover, he just needs to rest.
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El Morro
El Marro is a sick a Mexican sailor who is quarantined by the port health service with a bunkmate aboard a German ship docked in Veracruz.
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He wakes up and finds his shipmate dead. His body is cold. The pills he's supposed to take are fused together by the humidity. He gets up and in a downpour, leaves the ship to find his crew.
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He goes into the Zona Roja looking for the notorious El Eneas Cabaretera where he knows the crew was headed.
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He gets directions from a prostitute and he finds the neon sign but the street door is closed so he heads into the El Eneas hotel.
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In the lobby he meets Tomasa an older woman who is sitting all sprawled out on a couple of crates. She is drunk. She asks El Morro if he's\looking for women.
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He tells her yes. The woman says that they closed the outside entrance to keep the rain out. Tomasa tells him over there through that bead curtain and go down the lobby stairs to the cabaret. As El Morro heads that way we start to here music as he goes down the stair it gets louder.
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EL Morro, finds at the bottom the stairway, a puddle that reflects a partial section of arched neon lights over a juke box where a man and a woman are dancing. Closer to us is the main entrance, cut into the wall, and El Morro slips into the cabaret.
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Its a cheap "under the sea" motif of stuffed fish, sea shells and starfish. Eight women sit on a long bench behind a fishnet curtain, Eneas' "the catch of the day." After the women there is a partition behind which stretches the bar. In the center of the cabaret are a handful of tables and along the left wall sits Carmelo wearing a white linen suit playing an upright piano and crooning a song.
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El Morro slips past the women and along side the bar. He searches the tables and spots Simon one of his shipmates. Simon tells him he shouldn't have left the ship. El Morro tells him "Moustache" died and he didn't want to stay with a corpse.
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Their convo is broken up by Carmelo who steps up on the stage. "Ladies and Gentlemen its time for our famous show." From behind a hanging sheet emerges Perla the mermaid siren. . She wears a Mardi Gras half mask that just covers her eyes. A brief halter with clam shell like cups for her breasts. and sort of slit in front low cut sarong that morphs into a fish tail train that twists upwards.
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She wears a Mardi Gras half mask that just covers her eyes. A brief halter with clam shell like cups for her breasts. and sort of slit in front low cut sarong that morphs into a fish tail train that twists upwards.
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As Carmelo plays Perla sings about being a siren with soft skin and smiling eyes, who lightens men's loads. While singing she sinuously shimmies about the stage and leans out towards the audience cupping her breasts.
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At the end of the song Carmelo announces the spectacular "contest" that the El Eneas is famous for.
Perla will pick a lucky patron from the audience who will test his endurance, by having the pleasure to have Perla, put his most virile member into her mouth and see if he can make it to the end of Carmelo's song before he ejaculates. While Carmelo speaks Tomasa passes by the tables with two fishbowls for the bettors to place their bets. How Noir is this?
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Perla picks El Morro. His crew buddies stand him up and drag him up to the stage. Perla pulls him over to a crate. As Perla starts to undo El Morro's belt, Carmelo pulls a semi transparent sheet across the stage and a spot is turned on throwing the silhouettes of Perla and El Morro upon the sheet.
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Carmelo starts his song. We see the silhouette of Perla pull down silhouette El Morro's pants. Perla pushes him back and he sits on the crate and she gets down on her knees and we see her head bobbing up and down between El Morro's legs.
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El Morro doesn't last long, and apparently, he shoots his wad, passes out on the crate, and tips over onto the stage. The spot goes out. The lights go back on.
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Eneas comes out to calm down the now sufficiently horny sailors by announcing his girls are coming out and the patrons pair off with whores and head upstairs to their cribs.
The whole contest is really an advertisement for Perla's "special" talent. Oral Sex. When the show is over Perla usual M.O. is to take the now exited johns one by one up the stairs to get serviced.
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Perla walks over to Carmelo who is now at the bar, and takes a sip out of a shot glass and spits sperm and booze onto the floor. Tomasa is holding their take from the fish bowl scowling, pissed off because El Morro passed out, and all the other patrons have paired off and there's no one left to spend any more money for Perla.
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Carmelo tells her that they make out OK in the tips from the "floor show."
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The bar closes and the last thing we see before the screen fading to black is Perla sitting by the unconscious El Marro.
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The next morning we see El Marro stumbling out from behind the bead curtain into the hotel lobby. He goes up the stairs and following his nose finds Perla in a bathrobe fixing breakfast.
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Perla gives El Marro something to eat. Tomasa enters the scene and chastises Perla for having El Morro in the hotel because she knows Eneas doesn't like customers staying over night. Tomasa though, has another reason to keep Perla and El Marro apart.
Perla tells El Marro that he can stay with Carmelo at the abandoned powerhouse.
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It's at the abandoned powerhouse where Perla and El Morro begin their affair once he recovers.
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Eventually El Marro begins to become a problem at the El Eneas because he keeps hanging around Perla following her and her various johns up to her room and walking in on them.
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Eneas having enough of all this threatens El Morro telling to keep away, and stop interfering with Perla and her customers.
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Back at the abandoned power house after one of their lovemaking sessions El Marro and Perla are are talking about their pasts and something sounds way too familiar to El Marro.
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El Marro goes to the hotel and finds Tomasa. He now recognizes that is actually his mother who after all her years of whoring and hard living, he didn't recognize anymore. He drags he up to the roof. It's raining.
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The last time he saw Tomasa was when she and his drunk and abusive father had gotten into a serious fight. He was trying to stab Tomasa and El Marro picked up a hammer and slammed it into the back of his fathers head. Afterwards Tomasa told him to run and go to her brothers.
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| Does Perla Know? |
El Marro asks Tomasa if Perla knows and Tomasa says no.
Back at Carmelo's El Marro begins to hint to Perla that his ship is getting ready to depart soon and they may not see each other again. He also asks specific questions of Perla. He is trying to break the news to her. He asks her if her house was blue. She says yes. Do you remember being carried to church, Yes. He tells her that it was me, Nicolas who carried to church your brother.
Perla is unruffled by this news and want to continue the relationship. Marro tells her no and that he is leaving.
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Marro's version ends with Marro getting back on his ship. It's raining hard again. Perla drenched, follows him out to the end of the wharf and there she pulls out a tin can from the trash and uses the sharp tin to slit her wrists.
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We last see Perla floating face down in the harbor with flumes of blood radiating from her wrists.
From here on we get partial and overlapping repeats of the story from Perla's point of view and finally from Tomasa's. Presiding somewhat morally over all and standing a bit higher in the shit than the others is the kindly Carmelo, an artist at the piano, but also functioning as a poet philosopher, and confessor.
Perla
Perla's story starts with her on the stage looking down at the passed out El Marro who is laying exposed with his pants down on the stage.
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Tomasa comes over announcing that everyone is gone, She tells Perla to cover him. Tomasa starts complaining about the act not making enough money. Carmelo and Tomasa begin to talk about Tomasa investing into a business.
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Tomasa leaves. Perla touches El Marro's forehead. Its hot she tells Carmelo. He warns her not to touch him for public health reasons. (But Carmelo, its a little late for that, she just had his schlong in her mouth and swapped some precious bodily fluids, remember? )
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Fade to black.
We jump ahead to where El Marro walks into the kitchen and asks the time, and like before told in Marro's story Tomasa comes in a freaks out about El Marro being in the hotel.
We get more contest shots and more shots of Perla climbing the stairs to her crib with johns.
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We see sequences of Perla at the end of a trick getting paid by a Chinese john, fighting with her mother, and trying to convince Carmelo to open his own place and leave Eneas.
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We see sequences of Perla at the end of a trick getting paid by a Chinese john, fighting with her mother, and trying to convince Carmelo to open his own place and leave Eneas.
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In Perla's version El Marro volunteers to help Carmelo fight Eneas. They continue to make love. Eneas threatens El Marro because he's interfering with Perla's clients.
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Then one day Marro comes to her at Carmelo's with the news that she is his sister.
Instead of breaking things off, they can't get their clothes off fast enough and make passionate love once again.
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El Marro though still gets on the ship and Perla follows him to the end of the wharf. This version though is a sunny day. Perla slits her wrists with tin can and jumps into the water but she's rescued.
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We next see her lying in her bed. The doctor has left. Tomasa is told that he didn't perform the abortion because Perla has lost too much blood. Tomasa decides to do it herself and she fights with Perla who wants to keep El Marro's baby.
Tomasa wins and Perla is distraught.
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But Marro comes back to her and Carmelo tells them that he will speak to the Chinese for the permits of his bordello. All is good.
Tomasa
Tomasa's story gives us the background story. We go back to the night of the events that sent El Marro running away from home. Tomasa tells Nicolas "El Marro" that she had to go down to number 8 because a client wants her. He has to watch the baby because she was afraid of what her drunk and abusive husband might do.
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Just before Tomasa returns to the house her husband gets there through the back door. They begin to fight viciously with Tomasa brandishing a knife. Her husband manages to take it away and he starts hitting Tomasa.
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Tomasa screams for Nicolas to hit him with the hammer. El Moro does so, repeatedly. there's not much left of his head. Tomasa give him money from the trick she just pulled and tells him to go to her brother's place and hide.
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Tomasa tells the police that she killed her husband in self defense protecting her baby. At the police station she meets Carmelo who was caught stealing from a church poor box. They are both in the police captains office and Tomasa offers her body to the police chief for freedom for her and Carmelo. How Noir of her?
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Tomasa, gets Carmelo a job at Eneas the brothel where she finds work..
Jump to the recent past. At El Eneas we again see El Marro hanging around too much with Perla which of course results in her getting pregnant. In Tomasa's version, its Perla who gives herself her own abortion with a coat hanger.
Noirsville
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As each of the three narratives cover the same story from three different perspectives we observe that the narratives are slightly unreliable since each remembers the events differently depending on the emotions of the tellers. El Marro from a drunken, lustful, and melancholic perspective, Perla from a romantic one and Tomasa finally giving us the sleazy reality check.
The entire film feels like it takes place in some sordid abyss in a Noirsville limbo where everyone is doomed to repeat the past over and over again like some kind of macabre Twilight Zone episode.
This film finally has a good print in circulation. The old streamer I saw looked like a digitized VHS tape. The quality was so bad that it seem like you are watching it underwater. This go round its a 7-8/10
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The entire film feels like it takes place in some sordid abyss in a Noirsville limbo where everyone is doomed to repeat the past over and over again like some kind of macabre Twilight Zone episode.
This film finally has a good print in circulation. The old streamer I saw looked like a digitized VHS tape. The quality was so bad that it seem like you are watching it underwater. This go round its a 7-8/10
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