Novia que te vea (1994) User Reviews

A Witty Mexican Jewish Comedy

[sharkfinsoup · 10/10 · 5 April 2001]

This is a film about two Jewish girls growing up in Mexico City in the 60s. One is from a Sephardic Jewish background...her relatives came from Turkey to Mexico. They speak Ladino, the language the Jews in Spain spoke when they were kicked out by Columbus' backers Ferdinand and Isabella. She has a big family. The other has only her parents and one uncle...everybody else died in the Holocaust.

This is nicely observed, very funny coming of age film. It was a big hit at the Chicago Latino Film Festival. All my friends that saw it liked it a lot.

I don't think your local Blockbuster has this one, but you can buy it.

The title they used in the US release was "Bride to Be", although there is an older film with that same name.

Coming Back to Chgo on 9/17/08

[films42 · 9/10 · 19 August 2008]

As part of Cinema/Chgo's annual Summer Screening Series @ the Chgo Cultural Center. Also available from Amazon. Note that characters in this film speak FOUR different languages (depending on content): Hebrew, Ladino, Spanish & Yiddish. Rifke (one of the 2 leads) is also studying indigenous languages in college.

Info provided in prior comment is correct: Oshi is from a Sephardic family that immigrated to Mexico from Turkey right after WWI. Her "family language" is Ladino. Rifke is from an Ashkenazi family that moved to Mexico from Poland right before WWII (altho her uncle survives the Holocaust & joins them after WWII). Her "family language" is Yiddish. Most of the time though, with each other, with school friends, etc, the girls speak Spanish, but there's also lots of Hebrew too -- in the synagogue, Hashomer Hatzair (the Zionist youth group), etc.

For more on this topic, see A KISS TO THIS LAND.