A blameless and beautiful victim
Twenty-three-year-old Laura (Stephanie Sigman) lives with her father and little brother in a modest Tijuana neighbourhood. Her dreams are simple and girlish – she wants to be a beauty pageant queen. But when she’s caught in a nightclub shoot-out, Laura becomes the prisoner of a notorious and ruthless drug cartel leader, Lino (a truly sinister but charismatic Noe Hernández). Wide-eyed and numb with fear and shock, Laura is buffeted from shoot-out to hide-out to pimp-out. She endures several rapes and finally, public humiliation. She’s almost a passive victim, yet there’s enough in this performance to make you feel for her and her complete lack of choice. Laura is a grim symbol of all those innocent Mexicans caught in a drug war – a war that the film’s sombre coda tells us has killed more 47,000 people since 2006.
A portrait of complete and shocking corruption
When Laura tries to report her plight to a policeman, she’s delivered straight back into the arms of the drug gang known as La Estrella. It’s just one instance in which Miss Bala (which translates literally to ‘Miss Bullet’) outlines the insidious corruption that makes it impossible to trust anyone – not the police, military, judiciary nor the media. Interestingly, the story was inspired by the real life case of a Mexican beauty queen, Laura Zúñiga, who was busted for guns and drugs and made a mockery of by the press in 2008.
Virtuoso single-take tracking shots
Writer-director-editor Gerardo Naranjo (who was nominated for Un Certain Regard Cannes prize in 2011 for this film) works together with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély to create a tense and totally realistic thriller out of long, mobile takes that simulate real time and real experience. It’s as if we’re seeing everything from Laura’s perspective: the confusion, the grey and dirty streets, and the sudden, terrifying violence – including one of the most intense daytime shoot-outs between criminals and police that you’ll ever see on screen.
A valuable de-glamourising of drug crime
Naranjo has said he wanted the film to be the antithesis of drug-gang glamour – to show the thugs for the ‘pathetic’, spiritually impoverished people they are. Similarly, we see the streets of Mexico in all their grim reality: sparse grass, shoddy buildings, dusty streets and an atmosphere of exhausted fear created by endless sirens.
The saddest beauty pageant you’ve ever seen
There’s something innately tacky and tragic about all beauty pageants, but the one shown here is farcical in the extreme. Rigged to win, Laura sits stunned on stage, unable to give a single word answer to the host’s questions about her hopes and dreams. There’s an unforgettable scene preceding this, in which she stands in her underwear, having cash strapped to her body in a tight corset made of brown masking tape, her perfect hourglass shape achieved through pain and crime. As viewers we’re asked to contemplate the morality of our pleasure at looking at this beautiful, sexy woman, while also identifying with her degradation and powerlessness. It’s an interesting space to occupy.
Watch 'Miss Bala' at SBS on Demand
[link title="Miss Bala: Gerardo Naranjo interview" url="node/1135"]
[link title="Miss Bala Review" url="node/5862"]
[link title="Miss Bala Review" url="node/5862"]
Image
Share
