Chavela (2017)

Directed by: Catherine Gund, Daresha Kyi | 93 minutes | documentary, biography | Starring: Chavela Vargas, Pedro Almodóvar, Elena Benarroch, Miguel Bosé, Liliana Felipe, Laura García Lorca, Mariana Gyalui, Jose Alfredo Jimenez Jr., Patria Jiménez Flores, Eugenia León, Tania Libertad, Martirio, Diana Ortega, Tlany Ortega, Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, Jesusa Rodriguez, Marcela Rodriguez, Betty-Carol Sellen

The captivating documentary ‘Chavela’ tells the story of singer Chavela Vargas who gained fame, first in Mexico and eventually worldwide, with interpretations of traditional Mexican rancheras. The music, interpreted extra powerfully by Chavela’s raw voice, is about tragic loves, desires, drunkenness and loneliness. The same theme shaped her own life.

“It is important where we are going and not where we come from”, says the Costa Rican singer Chavela Vargas (1919-2012), who has become famous in Mexico, somewhat grumpily to her interviewers. Yet a little later she talks about the beginning of her career – she started performing in Mexico in the late 1930s – about her youth and her wanderings, so decisive for her later success. With that earlier statement she is not referring to hiding the past, but makes it clear: Chavela decides for herself what she shares and does not wish to be held accountable for that past.

The images from which these statements come are from an interview that one of the two directors, Catherine Gund, had with Vargas in 1991. That interview forms the leitmotif of the film, which is further supplemented with archive footage, beautiful photos from bygone decades and interviews with various people who played a special role in Vargas’s life. At the time of the ’91 interview, Chavela was making a big comeback on stage after a 12-year radio silence caused by her heavy alcohol addiction. She is still the diva she was in those images, although her full head of black hair is mostly gray and she is a lot thinner. Her stubbornness has not been lost in those twelve years.

The ranchera legend was born in Costa Rica but soon realized that a traditional life was not for her: with no more than her voice and her desire for freedom, she traveled to Mexico as a teenager. She knew that country from the film: a grand and compelling life was possible there. And so it happened. In the traditional 1940s and 1950s, Chavela caused a small revolution on stage: dressed in trousers and over a large poncho, black hair tied back in a ponytail, unmade and drinking tequila, she formed a stark contrast to the conventional ranchera singers. , who considered colorful dresses, heavy make-up and striking jewelry to be their trademark. But on the Mexico City nightclub circuit, the unruly Chavela became a big hit.

In the end, the alcohol, combined with her not always easy character, took its toll and Vargas ended up destitute and abandoned in a village near Mexico City. After years of alcohol use and a conflicted but also loving relationship with a Mexican lawyer, the singer said goodbye to alcohol and returned to the spotlight. Her comeback was given a huge boost by Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, who embraced Chavela as his muse. The film shows how a close friendship developed between them and her music could be heard in many of his films in the years that followed.

As befits a legend, many stories about Chavela have been circulating during her life. She also left a trail of flamboyant and still loyal characters who were important in her life and who in ‘Chavela’ recall memories of the legendary singer. The juicy anecdotes fly around the viewer’s ears. Whether Vargas actually sneaked into women’s bedrooms to kidnap them; we do not know. Whether she really spent the night with actress Ava Gardner after Elisabeth Taylor’s wedding in Acapulco, Mexico, remains a mystery. There are also countless stories about the period that the singer spent in the house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Coyoacán and legendary drinking bouts that started on Friday and only ended on Monday afternoon. What does appear is the ever-recurring loneliness that played a major and painful role in Vargas’s life. Love affairs with different women – although Vargas didn’t really come out until age 81, her homosexuality had been a given for years; she just never spoke of it in those terms — ended up in heartache, and as she learned as a young girl, Chavela ended up on her own. And it is precisely this character that resonates in everything she sings, and leaves her audiences all over the world with tears in their eyes.

With ‘Chavela’, directors Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi deliver a loving portrait of a legendary artist who had a special meaning for so many people. ‘Chavela’ was screened in the Netherlands at IDFA and during the Pink Film Days and was shown at the Amsterdam Spanish Film Festival.