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Dreaming of Paradise

Lorenz Chan | Phoenix, AZ United States | 10/23/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Maria Novaro, a wonderful Mexican storyteller, and film director brings to the screen a magnificent crash of cultures and traditions. In this film (1994), Novaro exalts her characters and their triumphant discovery for happiness in life. It is considered a Social Drama but you can discover more elements as you watch it. The solitary characters are looking for inner peace, identity, freedom, love, meaning, perhaps the metaphoric experience of going to the Paradise. Ironically, this "garden" setting is nonetheless the famous multifaceted border city of Tijuana, Mexico. This is a famous place where many cultures have been intertwining for many years. In this film, we see Mexicans, Americans, and Chicanos with intricate, and similar experiences of solitude. We can hear Spanish, English, Spanglish, and other dialects like Mixteco, which is not very typical for the habitual audiences. We also see a variety of ages, young, middle age, and mature. Men and women carried on with roles not very popular or traditionally accepted. We can see a mixture of cultures, rich, poor, mystic, liberal, and conservative. As an innovator, (there are not many women directors with her popularity) Novaro's stories seem to present the element of: "I was there", and "I know what I am talking about". These stories are not magic tales, nor cheese episodes. They are just plain and daily hard life at the border where everyone is dreaming to get to Paradise."