Review: Miss Bala (2011)
Cast: Stephanie Sigman, Noe Hernandez, Irene Azuela
Director: Gerardo Naranjo
Country: Mexico
Genre: Action | Drama
Official Trailer: Here
A young woman’s desire to participate in the Miss Baja California pageant is the unlikely entry point to address the violence and surveillance of everyday life in Mexico due to the billion dollar industry of drug trafficking in Gerardo Naranjo’s latest film, Miss Bala. Due to its focus on the effects of drug trafficking—that is, kidnappings, killings, and shootouts with the police and military—the critique may be that as a result it provides no insight into the larger picture that closely ties together Mexico, the United States, Central America, and South America to constitute the drug war. But cued to filmmaker Naranjo’s vision and rejection of didacticism, Miss Bala is a bold and accomplished work: it not only captures the fear and anxiety of day-to-day living in such an environment, but also de-glamourises the impunity of the drug cartels and the labour involved in maintaining this reign of violence, in contrast to many films that depict the same issues.
A young woman’s desire to participate in the Miss Baja California pageant is the unlikely entry point to address the violence and surveillance of everyday life in Mexico due to the billion dollar industry of drug trafficking…
Miss Bala may share certain traits with what David Wilt calls “reality-based exploitation” films made in Mexico. The story of how beauty pageant-aspirant Laura Guerrero gets caught up in the daily activities of a drug cartel in the Mexico-U.S. border town of Baja is based on an actual occurrence. Furthermore, Miss Bala’s production and theatrical release occurred/is occurring at a time when the extremely brutal acts of several drug cartels continue to wreak havoc within Mexico and in border towns as we speak. Miss Bala may also share some traits with the independent cine de denuncia (social message films) for obvious reasons but also for its connotation of ‘quality,’ more personal cinema. But Miss Bala takes these similarities only to reject the former’s exploitation and melodrama and the latter’s preachiness. Naranjo made the conscious decision to approach the story in an anti- way: anti-melodrama, anti-action, and anti-thriller. Form, performance, and narrative strongly cohere to this restrained approach, all the better to provoke the spectator to go along on this nightmarish journey with Laura in a very uncomfortable way, as if with blinders on.
By having the camera stick physically closely to Laura, at times following her like a shadow, throughout the film, she becomes the receptacle of all that happens around her in the film and all that the spectator imagines, feels, and experiences outside of the film. The beginning of the film serves to establish this identification: the opening scenes refuse to reveal Laura’s face. The camera simply follows her, as if to acclimatise the spectator to her point of view. Only after several minutes does the film reveal her face, when she meets with her friend to attend the audition for the pageant. Minutes afterward, Laura looks right at the camera and states her name and age during the audition, as if to incite the spectator to take Laura as his/her mirror reflection. Henceforth, to morbidly paraphrase the title of Lewis Carroll’s book, Naranjo takes the spectator “through the looking-glass, and [to see] what Laura found there.” What Laura finds through her forced association with drug cartel boss Valdez and his henchmen is an explicitly sordid cycle of trafficking, violence, paranoiac vigilance, revenge, and ubiquitous power, all of which crystallise in a twisted way through the beauty pageant and Laura’s rigged participation.
…an explicitly sordid cycle of trafficking, violence, paranoiac vigilance, revenge, and ubiquitous power, all of which crystallise in a twisted way through the beauty pageant..
Apart from limiting spectatorial knowledge to Laura’s field of vision and experience, Naranjo makes immense use of long takes to aid in the film’s realism and the sensual immediacy of Laura’s increasing complicity with Valdez and his cohort. The camera subtly meanders around the nightclub, which becomes the unwitting meeting place between Laura and Valdez’ cartel and the site of the bloodbath perpetrated by the latter. The camera also often accompanies Laura, Valdez, et. al. in vehicles, like an invisible passenger in the backseat, as they go about their operations: making money deliveries, crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, escaping from a deadly shootout. Laura’s descent into Valdez’ plan of action would not have had the same kind of visceral impact without the long takes, coupled with the camera’s closeness to Laura’s person.
On this note, it becomes vital that Laura as a character is more or less paralysed in terms of fighting back, escaping, or looking for help. Naranjo made a point to draw out Laura in this way, to prod the spectator to accompany her through frustration, which lends itself to an allegorical reading. At the same time, through actress Stephanie Sigman’s performance, Laura maintains a core strength despite her helplessness.
Actors Sigman and Noe Hernandez (as Valdez) underwent separate processes of rehearsals with Naranjo, to better capture the tension of power involved in their relationship. Both of them capture it to a tee. As Laura, Sigman is spot-on through her ironic lack of external expression on the one hand and richness of meaning in her eyes on the other. Naranjo wanted Sigman to emote only through her eyes, so that a restraint holds together her performance and serves as a foil to the unbridled and unpredictable violence into which she falls. Hernandez plays Valdez brilliantly, also in a restrained manner. Though always close to Laura in proximity, Naranjo’s characterisation and Hernandez’ interpretation of Valdez make him impenetrable at a psychological level. The result is that Valdez generates a constant dustbowl of suspicion and anxiety around anyone, but without absolutely demonising him to the point of abstraction or humanising him to the point of pity.
Ultimately, Miss Bala presents not so much the surveillance and/or ubiquity of violence but the everydayness and openness of it all. These criminals operate in the open and in the daytime; citizens know who they are and maybe even where they live. They are not in hiding, can be anyone (like the traffic cop to whom Laura seeks to confess and ask for help), and they can spring up anywhere—in a nightclub, at one’s home, at a beauty pageant. An altogether gripping work whose ambiguous conclusion may be the film’s most disturbing aspect.
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