Film Review

Anastacia Grenda

The Mexican film “Ave Maria” features an exceptional performance by Tere

Lopez Tarin as a young woman who is persecuted for her beliefs, both

scientific and spiritual.

Tarin plays the titular Maria, who is living at a mission in “the New

Spain” in 1659. Because her father is in good graces with the prelate who

can fund a new cathedral for the mission, Maria is allowed to focus more

on her intellectual pursuits, such as botany and astronomy, than on her

prayers.

But her father falls out of favor, and a jealous nun and a misogynistic

priest see that Maria undergoes a “reformation” that takes away her

beloved books and maps.

Maria’s subsequent spiritual revelation has her hearing voices that send

her to a village to help the Indians who are dying of “Spanish sickness.”

The priest, cowed by Maria’s intellectual superiority, now sees her

usurping his power over the mission’s nuns and the local Indians, who

believe that she is divine, a “Ray of Light.”

The feminist message is laced with melodrama, including poisonings, a

love struck priest and burning at the stake. The actors, led by Tarin,

make it all extremely watchable.

o7 (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)f7

* “Ave Maria” screens at 3:15 p.m. Sunday at Edwards Island 7 Cinemas.