Alejandro Springall's Santitos is as near an heir to the fancifully tragicomic sensibility of Like Water for Chocolate as any film I can recall, and that's saying something. The story finds a small-town Mexican widow named Esperanza (Dolores Heredia) convinced that the daughter she was told had died of complications in surgery has actually been kidnapped and sold into prostitution, all because Saint Jude appeared to her in her dirty oven window and told her so. Thus begins a winding journey by Esperanza to Tijuana and eventually to Los Angeles, with plenty of colorful characters (notably, a priest completely flustered by Esperanza's tale) along the way, and a palpable sense of Mexican Catholicism as a magical spiritual influence. It all becomes a bit disjointed in the third act, with Esperanza improbably falling in love with a professional wrestler, and some viewers may be disturbed by the idea of prostitution as a means to emotional wholeness. Before that happens, however, there are more than enough oddly entertaining moments to give Santitos a strange charm, from kaleidoscopic visions of women shaving their legs to bordello secrets that are best left unspoken. Recommended. (S. Renshaw)
Santitos
Fox, 105 min., in Spanish w/English subtitles, R, VHS: $14.98, DVD: $19.98 Volume 18, Issue 6
Santitos
Star Ratings
As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
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