The Good Girls (Las Niñas Bien)
The 1982 Mexican debt crisis, as seen through the eyes of the women behind the men in manufacturing, that is, the ones with the most to lose. They’re the type of pampered souls who demand their octopus be hammer tender and ask the waiter to bring fresh water because the ice isn’t cold enough. Standing in a round dressing room, admiring herself before an open-wide accordion bank of mirrors, Sofia (Ilse Salas) looks every inch a movie star — as opposed to a well-kept socialite shunted to the sidelines, awaiting modernity, as one of the niñas puts it, while the menfolk sort things out. If ever a film could have profited from walking the fine line between satire and social commentary, it’s this, but there’s not so much as one smile to be cracked throughout the somber course of events. Rather than set Sofia apart from the orderly and colorful exterior, writer-director Alejandra Márquez Abella presents a character incapable of being humbled. The production and performances are all first-rate, but without an edge, this chugs along in a manner befitting a dead-serious, albeit it handsomely pointless, episode of The Real Housewives of Mexico’s Upper-Class. — Scott Marks