The barking and sirens behind " Angel de Fuego's" opening credits do not get muffled by the delayed musical sounds, night lights, and bright colors of the Circus of Fantasies. For the tattered tents, cracked paint, empty bleachers, broken families, sexual license that greet us express a fatalistic melancholy, and a poverty determined outside of this marginal Mexican landscape.
"Life without love is not worth living" i believe the theme song says. Love is salvation, love is life itself---all else is sacrifice, and human sacrifice is the worst horror. So the young heroine says--after disrupting the Bible play--of Abraham's sacrifice "so he loved God more than his own son."
But the world depicted here is one in which the closest thing to love is incest. Only Alma, the young fire-eater/acrobat, who refuses to whore for the failing circus--she sleeps with her ailing father instead, and becomes impregnated by him-- has the courage to resist this loveless world. By choosing her future child ("a monster" to her bosses) over her job, she sets out on her own with a passionate belief that her salvation is in the stirring physical presence inside her body.
But by taking up refuge in a traveling puppet show, which performs OT stories, she encounters an even stronger patriarchal trap than what the circus offered. Refugio, the priestess, who God speaks through, senses Alma's evil from the start and sends her mixed signals of acceptance and rejection---all for the purposes of using this sinner to her own contorted religious ends.
For her scheme to work she must view Alma as a great sinner (she's informed by God)), as a Temptress to her holy son, Sacramento, and as a Penitent. She warns that her appearance cannot cover-up her evil, that God sees and hears all, and she rejects her plea to be included in the Book of Forgiveness. While promising "the Garden of Eden," and safety in her fold, she invariably eclipses Alma's truly infectious smile with her accusatory expressions, and coldly repels her capacity for life: "What you like is not always what god likes."
Penance is the only way to "open Heaven's doors" and she alone can administer it. Just as Sacramento, the Tempted, must practice extreme vigilance over his young body (every look at Alma is followed up by some form of bodily self-torment) so will Alma, the Temptress; be forced to endure a similar tortuous course. "Kneel down, forehead on ground" she says, as she introduces her long ritual of penances, "I must Purify you." This purification which involves fasting, intense heat from fire, animal sacrifice, and public nudity is all part of her (God's) ultimate plan for her two charges.
For Alma is to Refugio what she is to the circus owner---a body to sacrifice on behalf of an abstract Father, or exploit on behalf of actual fathers. Once Refugio aborts Alma's baby, in order to appease her God so that her son Sacramento can become God's true minister, the die is cast for Alma.
Broken and homeless again, she returns to the Circus, where a fellow performer remarks of her struggle to mount to the acrobat's swing: "That angel burnt her wings already." It's a remark, which is more prophetic than accurate, however, because once again she finds her body being ripped off in the bleak circus night..
In one last effort to find some form of salvation and trust, she visits Sacramento, who she finds engaged in chastisement of the flesh. But even strapped in cactus, and despite Alma's very direct pleas-- "Since your mom purified me i feel empty." "You speak his words, that's why I need you," "you'll pray for me," and "why do you punish yourself so much"--she is the Temptress first and foremost, and he 'succumbs' to her. With this final betrayal, she says to this sinless wonder: "Killing an angel is a sin, and your God doesn't forgive those who sin."
Her imperatives lost, Alma returns , kisses Jose, her asleep ally, on his shaved skull, and proceeds douse the main tent with kerosene, in preparation for her final fire act, in which she will join St. Joan, and all the other burnt women of history.
*******************
Despite or because of the grim realism, truly evil persons are absent in this film's environment. Refugio has redeeming features---she attempts to reach out to the poor both with her art and her strong presence. She says the "wretched" are not sinners, and "suffer because they have no steady place." Alma's father, "the greatest clown in Latin America" does not appear active in the incest, which is not to say he doesn't welcome it. Only the circus operator is a bad ass---but he's rather sluggish in this.
And Malena, Alma's mother, is certainly the most redeeming of the "bad" characters. At no time is she anything but a sympathetic character, despite Alma's refusal to acknowledge her. She too is a female in a world suspended in patriarchal poverty. She does not appear to be at all responsible for her broken family and, in any case, sincerely welcomes Alma back into her life. And that she does this in a garbage dump to a daughter who is both wearing her father's memorial photo around her neck and bearing her father's child, only underscores her own innocence and the power of patriarchy to insert itself into her equally innocent daughter's life.
"Life without love is not worth living" i believe the theme song says. Love is salvation, love is life itself---all else is sacrifice, and human sacrifice is the worst horror. So the young heroine says--after disrupting the Bible play--of Abraham's sacrifice "so he loved God more than his own son."
But the world depicted here is one in which the closest thing to love is incest. Only Alma, the young fire-eater/acrobat, who refuses to whore for the failing circus--she sleeps with her ailing father instead, and becomes impregnated by him-- has the courage to resist this loveless world. By choosing her future child ("a monster" to her bosses) over her job, she sets out on her own with a passionate belief that her salvation is in the stirring physical presence inside her body.
But by taking up refuge in a traveling puppet show, which performs OT stories, she encounters an even stronger patriarchal trap than what the circus offered. Refugio, the priestess, who God speaks through, senses Alma's evil from the start and sends her mixed signals of acceptance and rejection---all for the purposes of using this sinner to her own contorted religious ends.
For her scheme to work she must view Alma as a great sinner (she's informed by God)), as a Temptress to her holy son, Sacramento, and as a Penitent. She warns that her appearance cannot cover-up her evil, that God sees and hears all, and she rejects her plea to be included in the Book of Forgiveness. While promising "the Garden of Eden," and safety in her fold, she invariably eclipses Alma's truly infectious smile with her accusatory expressions, and coldly repels her capacity for life: "What you like is not always what god likes."
Penance is the only way to "open Heaven's doors" and she alone can administer it. Just as Sacramento, the Tempted, must practice extreme vigilance over his young body (every look at Alma is followed up by some form of bodily self-torment) so will Alma, the Temptress; be forced to endure a similar tortuous course. "Kneel down, forehead on ground" she says, as she introduces her long ritual of penances, "I must Purify you." This purification which involves fasting, intense heat from fire, animal sacrifice, and public nudity is all part of her (God's) ultimate plan for her two charges.
For Alma is to Refugio what she is to the circus owner---a body to sacrifice on behalf of an abstract Father, or exploit on behalf of actual fathers. Once Refugio aborts Alma's baby, in order to appease her God so that her son Sacramento can become God's true minister, the die is cast for Alma.
Broken and homeless again, she returns to the Circus, where a fellow performer remarks of her struggle to mount to the acrobat's swing: "That angel burnt her wings already." It's a remark, which is more prophetic than accurate, however, because once again she finds her body being ripped off in the bleak circus night..
In one last effort to find some form of salvation and trust, she visits Sacramento, who she finds engaged in chastisement of the flesh. But even strapped in cactus, and despite Alma's very direct pleas-- "Since your mom purified me i feel empty." "You speak his words, that's why I need you," "you'll pray for me," and "why do you punish yourself so much"--she is the Temptress first and foremost, and he 'succumbs' to her. With this final betrayal, she says to this sinless wonder: "Killing an angel is a sin, and your God doesn't forgive those who sin."
Her imperatives lost, Alma returns , kisses Jose, her asleep ally, on his shaved skull, and proceeds douse the main tent with kerosene, in preparation for her final fire act, in which she will join St. Joan, and all the other burnt women of history.
*******************
Despite or because of the grim realism, truly evil persons are absent in this film's environment. Refugio has redeeming features---she attempts to reach out to the poor both with her art and her strong presence. She says the "wretched" are not sinners, and "suffer because they have no steady place." Alma's father, "the greatest clown in Latin America" does not appear active in the incest, which is not to say he doesn't welcome it. Only the circus operator is a bad ass---but he's rather sluggish in this.
And Malena, Alma's mother, is certainly the most redeeming of the "bad" characters. At no time is she anything but a sympathetic character, despite Alma's refusal to acknowledge her. She too is a female in a world suspended in patriarchal poverty. She does not appear to be at all responsible for her broken family and, in any case, sincerely welcomes Alma back into her life. And that she does this in a garbage dump to a daughter who is both wearing her father's memorial photo around her neck and bearing her father's child, only underscores her own innocence and the power of patriarchy to insert itself into her equally innocent daughter's life.
