A new Spanish-language film—No Dress Code Required (Etiqueta No Rigurosa)—follows the fight of one Mexican couple to legally wed in their hometown of Baja California.
Although same-sex marriage is legal in Mexico City—and a handful of locations including Jalisco and Puebla— a number of states have refused to implement the ruling.
Victor and Fernando run a hair salon and have been in a relationship for more than a decade. They decided to wed in 2013 after the Mexican Supreme Court declared that same-sex marriage was legal.
However, the couple soon realised that it was going to be near impossible to legally marry in their home state of Baja California.
Instead of simply travelling to Mexico City to exchange vows, Victor and Fernando decide to fight against their city council—despite a wave of criticism from the community.
“No Dress Code Required tells the simple story of a Mexican couple’s desire to get married and the impediments put in their way by those determined to keep them apart,” says the director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT+ rights program.
“A frustrating experience that leaves an ordinary couple with a choice—to despair, or resist.”
Director Cristina Herrera Borquez says that Mexico is currently at an important crossroads.
“Contemporary times in Mexico are being tested,” she says.
“It questions our ability as a society to prove, if in fact, it is truly democratic; if, indeed, we can enforce equal rights established by the Constitution.
“At this crossroad we find the members of the LGBTQ community who want full recognition of their civil rights, and civil society where sexual differences are still thought as a sin or pathology. In its most basic elements, this is a very simple story: it is a love story.”
No Dress Code Required premiered in North America at the Palm Springs Film Festival but is set to open in New York on November 3. International release dates have not yet been announced.
You can watch the trailer below:
