"Madeinusa" is the "...Spinal Tap" of ethnographic movies. With its tongue firmly entrenched in cheek, this Peruvian film may have you defending incest for an embarrassingly long time. Writer/director Claudia Llosa knows her audience are culturally-sensitive, global citizens who wouldn't dream of insisting that a non-western settlement adopt our own Christian-sanctioned assortment of ideals and mores. When Cayo(Juan Ubaldo Huaman) jumps in bed with his two daughters(Madeinusa and Chale), we consider the social context and rationalize this deviant behavior as being the practices of a society that doesn't place a taboo on inter-family relationships. Funny thing, though; this Peruvian backwater IS a god-fearing community. Every year, they pretend he's dead for three days, literally dead, which means Jesus isn't just magic for the remaining three-hundred-sixty odd days to these country-folk, Jesus is alive. The town holds an annual pageant to crown this year's virgin, and this year, Madeinusa(Magaly Solier), is it. She's quite literally, a quasi-Christian beauty queen: Miss Dead Jesus. There's floats. There's fireworks. And most importantly, the people are granted a weekend-long get-out-of-hell card; without repercussions, debauchery(wife-swapping, the aforementioned incest) is practiced without the confinements of moral legislation. Now, at long last, incest can safely be called perverted, because Cayo does indeed know that having relations with your own flesh and blood is perverted. When the wayfaring gringo says that the town is crazy, it gives the audience permission to throw caution out the window and openly criticize their primitive inclinations.
Salvador(Carlos J. de la Torre) is a white man from Lima. He's our repository for western ideas(e.g. incest: a bad idea), the guy who is willing to call a spade a spade(he thinks the people are crazy; we concur), which is why his vertical quickie with Madeinusa in the midst of the communal grab-ass festival, startles us, because the film knows how men are. Fear of incarceration, sadly, may be the sole reason why the moral divide between camaraderie and intimacy isn't crossed. With no stronghold of the law to keep Salvador's libido in check, our "civilized" man pins Madeinusa to the wall and makes like a piston.
"Madeinusa" is a stinging indictment against organized religion. Think about Father Oliver O'Grady in "Deliver us from Evil" who violated all those little boys and girls. These Peruvians(fictionalized Peruvians, let me make that clear) are honest about the darker side of human nature. "Madeinusa", cobbled from Stephen King's "Children of the Corn"(short story, film; either/or) and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", forces us to ask about the state of God each time we sin. We're all assassins, right? It doesn't take a village.
Salvador(Carlos J. de la Torre) is a white man from Lima. He's our repository for western ideas(e.g. incest: a bad idea), the guy who is willing to call a spade a spade(he thinks the people are crazy; we concur), which is why his vertical quickie with Madeinusa in the midst of the communal grab-ass festival, startles us, because the film knows how men are. Fear of incarceration, sadly, may be the sole reason why the moral divide between camaraderie and intimacy isn't crossed. With no stronghold of the law to keep Salvador's libido in check, our "civilized" man pins Madeinusa to the wall and makes like a piston.
"Madeinusa" is a stinging indictment against organized religion. Think about Father Oliver O'Grady in "Deliver us from Evil" who violated all those little boys and girls. These Peruvians(fictionalized Peruvians, let me make that clear) are honest about the darker side of human nature. "Madeinusa", cobbled from Stephen King's "Children of the Corn"(short story, film; either/or) and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", forces us to ask about the state of God each time we sin. We're all assassins, right? It doesn't take a village.