ROBE OF GEMS – Review by Jennifer Green
Some 3,754 women and girls were murdered in Mexico last year alone, averaging out to around 10 women killed every day, according to Mexico’s National Public Security System. That’s in addition to the 1,000 to nearly 3,000 women and girls reported missing each year in the country, according to human rights organization IMDHD.
It’s no wonder filmmakers in Mexico, particularly women, are taking up this topic through their art. Recent examples include Teodora Mihai’s La Civil and Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de Fuego), both of which premiered at Cannes. Like these two films, Natalia López Gallardo’s 2022 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Robe of Gems (Manto de Gemas) turns on the efforts of women to protect their loved ones from pervasive violence around them.
Isabel (Nailea Norvind), a mother of two in the process of separating from her husband, returns to the abandoned rural estate of her mother. There, a housemaid named María (Antonia Olivares) is mourning the disappearance of her sister. María has been forced to take a job assisting a group of local thugs, including caretaking their kidnap victims. One of the younger wannabe thugs, Adán (Juan Daniel García Treviño), is the son of a local policewoman, Torta (Aida Roa), who will do anything to get her son off the path he’s on.
That instinct drives her to bypass her corrupt superiors and attempt to clamp down on local traffickers. Meanwhile, a seemingly adrift Isabel gets involved in trying to figure out what happened to María’s sister. Both women want to do right, but with no solidarity or help to be found around them, they ultimately put themselves and their loved ones in jeopardy as a result of their actions.
Who can you trust when violence and corruption are rampant? López aims to convey the sense of fear people feel in this setting. It comes across clearly throughout the film, and especially in a late moment when María stares soulfully into the camera. It almost feels like a silent plea for help, which perhaps this film is also sending out.
The very real social context equally emerges in this tale. One scene shows a crowded room where multigenerational family members file notices about missing relatives. A bureaucrat coldly mentions that they find unidentified corpses daily.
Veteran editor López demonstrates a natural talent for non-verbal storytelling in her debut feature as a director. The film slowly builds a haunting tale of violence, fear and corruption in the Mexican countryside through languid scenes that can often feel disjointed, matched by unusual framing and ambient sound. Placing her camera at unexpected angles, varying the lighting, focusing on action while dialogue happens out of frame, not revealing what is happening in overheard sounds while the camera stares at a seemingly unrelated space – these are just some of the techniques she employs.
The result is a surprising amount of tension. You feel you don’t know the full story of what’s happening, meaning anything can happen at any moment.
While the film moves slowly and runs a little long, the pace feels part and parcel of López’s intention to convey her characters’ psychological states without requiring them to say anything plainly. At a press conference in Berlin last year, she talked about not feeling equipped to put herself in the shoes of her characters, especially the indigenous women. “I didn’t want to put invented emotions or invented words,” she said. “I trust very much the cinematic language to transmit the theme of the film.” That is does.
