The Virgin of Juarez (2006)

Directed by: Kevin James Dobson | 86 minutes | drama | Actors: Minnie Driver, Anna Claudia Talancón, Angus MacFadyen, Asai Morales, Joanna Cassidy, Jacob Vargas. Guillermo Diaz, Natalie Amenula, Jorge Cervera, Noel Gugliemi, Rob Macie and others

Since 1993, hundreds of young women have been murdered in the town of Juarez, Mexico. Some of the murders are known, some of the women are still missing. It remains a mystery to this day why the murders are committed. A perpetrator has still not been caught. In ‘The Virgin of Juarez’ this event is used as the basis for the story. Mariela (Talancón) comes to live in Juarez alone to work in a factory. She thinks she will get a better life here and earn a lot of money. In reality, her working hours are long, she has little contact with other people and she lives in a small room.

Upon arriving in town, she is attacked by a man and rescued by another. However, these two men seem to be working together and later the man who saved her turns out to be trading women. One evening he also invades Mariela’s room to bring a man. The result of this visit can be seen at the hospital when Mariela is brought in badly injured; raped and abused. Karina Danes (Driver) is a journalist for a magazine in Los Angeles. She tries to get a grip on the mystery and make a nice story out of it. For this she interviews mothers of disappeared or murdered girls and on one of those evenings they hear a horn in the distance from – as it turns out later – a woman who is attacked at that moment and is eventually murdered. The next day Karina finds the body and from then on she continues to visit the police station and hospital, much to the chagrin of a detective. She is also present when it is discovered that Mariela has stigmata on her hands that are bleeding profusely. Mariela tells the Father (Morales) that she survived the abuse only because the Blessed Virgin Mary led her out of the desert where she was left behind. From that moment on, Mariela is seen as a kind of saint by the fanatic believers. She is taken from the hospital and placed in the church so that people can come and see the miracle and she can bless them.

And so the film takes a bizarre turn. At first you thought you were watching a realistic film, since the events actually happened, suddenly you witness a very drastic change to the supernatural. And that’s a sad choice, because it immediately stops the film’s interest. The makers cut themselves in the fingers by explicitly stating at the start of the film that the film is based on facts. As a viewer, you therefore have the expectation that the film remains realistic and that a plausible explanation of the murders is given. At first this also seems to be given, as the idea of ​​trafficking in women is elaborated, but this line stops to make way for Mariela’s story as heroine and saint. And that too is an unfortunate choice. While the intent is probably to evoke more empathy in the viewer, it only comes across as a failure to single out just one of the dozens of women being murdered. Beautiful acting performances or an astonishing camera work could have improved the film, but this too remains mediocre. Driver still convinces as the idiosyncratic journalist who sinks her teeth into a story, but that’s about all. In short. the makers failed to smoothly weave fact and fiction into the film. ‘The Virgin of Juarez’ therefore mainly sticks with you as a strange and at times even lame film.