In its first few minutes, you might be excused for thinking that La Zona (subtitled in the French release "Propriete Privee") is shot inside a California gated community. The neat-as-a-pin lawns, the cookie cutter housing, the American style vehicles - everything in the opening shot except the glimpse over the security wall: sprawled out over the neighboring hills and valleys is a Third World barrio. You're on the divide between poor, urban, desperate Mexico and its wealthy, suburban, and desperate elite.
Uruguayan-born director Rodrigo Pla and his screenwriter wife Laura Santullo have given us a harrowing picture of a world that, as Pla says in an interview on the film's French website, represents "a future that, in large part, already exists." And not just in Mexico.
As Beth Accomando of KPBS said at La Zona's showing in March 2008 at the San Diego Latino Film Festival
Director Pla admits that his wife's story, while drawing on the reality of socio-economic polarization, violence, and corruption, is a cautionary tale, and the notion that a wealthy island in the middle of a sea of poverty would have its own legal code stretches reality. But only a bit.
Since this is a universal tale, think about the millions of Americans, Israelis, and South Africans who would find themselves right at home in La Zona. Maybe not its atmosphere of impunity in the face of corrupt law enforcement, but certainly in the attitude of "there's never too much security." Consider this USA Today report from 2002 on America's gated millions, who if anything have increased over the last six years. TC Boyle, in his 1995 novel Tortilla Curtain, visited this terrain with his withering wit (see the Penguin Book Club site for an interview with Boyle on building "impregnable" walled communities that are anything but).
"Stand Your Ground" - or, as critics say, "Shoot The Avon Lady" - laws allowing the use of deadly force by individuals, even on the suspicion that an alleged intruder is intent on doing them harm, is another Norteamericano concept that would be familiar to the citizens of La Zona. Of course in Pla's depiction (his first feature film, by the way), much depends on who is using the deadly force. It's a world where the notion of a "Witness Protection Program" has a sinister twist, and omerta is usually the safest and most lucrative course of action.
I'm not sure whether La Zona will have a release beyond the art house circuit in the US, but it is due for release next month in the UK. It deserves a wide showing, for though it is a suspense film par excellence, it's one with a message. But don't expect nonstop ultra violence; what bloodletting there is is rather quiet, like the pop of pistols muffled by air conditioning and wall-to-wall carpeting. And no easy answers either; there are victims on both sides of the wall. La Zona has won a number of film festival awards.
My thanks again to the ladies of the Brussels group Cinefemme, whose eye for good film is always evident in their Sunday morning sneak previews.
(Film poster credit: LaZona-lefilm.com)