Backyard/El traspatio (Carlos Carrera, 2009): Mexico

Reviewed by Charlotte Brange. Viewed at Lobero Theater, at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Backyard is Mexico’s submission for the Best Foreign Film to the Academy Award 2010 and is based on a true story. Backyard might also be one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen.

Backyard is set at the USA-Mexico border, in a town called Juarez. This town carries their own dark secret – thousands of women disappear every year. Some are found dead, dumped in the desert like trash. But most of them are never found.

Blanca Bravo is the new police captain in town. She takes this ‘problem’ to her heart and feel especially related to it just because she’s a woman. So many women disappears that it’s not even news anymore, which makes her angry and wanting to find a solution. But it’s not easy being a woman in a town where the respect for women is almost gone..

Margára is a young girl that moves to Juarez to work in a factory with her cousin. She’s leaving her parents behind, which makes her want a taste of the freedom and do whatever she feel like doing. She recieved a lot of a attention from a boy that she meet at a club and is soon involved in a relationship. But Margára is not ready, so she breaks up with him and starts dating other boys. But just as Blanca, it’s not easy to be living in a town where girls are not safe..

We follow this two stories at the same time. Blanca’s fight for her badge, her career and for the women. Margára’s fight for being a girl with a freedom. This is very well put together and their lives are never predictable. Carrera uses long clips without stopping, which is very impressive. The lighting is very good as well – Carrera used the heat and sand in the desert to make sort of an ‘hopeless’ feeling, to show that Blanca’s work was nearly impossible. He also used repetition as a good weapon; a man that held a radio program about Juarez was constantly shown. His talk surrounded the police’s work (or not work) involving the women that disappeared.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this might be one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. It was scene where a girl gets raped and eventually murdered. I’m not sure if it affected me more just because I’m a woman, but it might be the strongest scene I’ve ever seen. Shot with a hand camera, close-ups of faces and action, everything made the scene so convincing that I actually began crying. It’s a powerful movie that will make you think a lot.

But one of the most excellent part of the movie was really the ending. Not how the story turned out, but the very end. Since it’s based on a true story, they also had numbers on how many women that have died/were missing since 1997. And the numbers were high.. too high. This is absolutely not a movie to watch for the entertainment sake. This is reality, and I was horrified with the reality..