TIFF24 REVIEW: Querido trópico [Beloved Tropic] [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 108 minutes
Director(s): Ana Endara Mislov
Writer(s): Ana Endara Mislov & Pilar Moreno

Who is that girl?

It begins as a story about an immigrant woman seeking assistance to get her paperwork in order with the government. Born in Colombia, Ana María (Jenny Navarrete) has been living in Panama for three years now. She left home when her mother died and has continued to care for ailing women at an assisted living facility ever since. Desperate for the security that a visa would provide and the money inherent to a full-time gig considering she’s also five-months pregnant, Ana María jumps at the chance to work for a local businesswoman falling prey to dementia (Paulina García’s Mechi). Her new patient’s economic status and political connections (via her daughter, Juliette Roy’s Jimena, who now runs the company) might just be the answer to all her troubles.

Beloved Tropic isn’t simply about an exchange of services, though. Documentarian Ana Endara Mislov and co-writer Pilar Moreno ensure that we realize right from the start that Ana María truly cares about this line of work. The character is soft-spoken and attentive. When many would receive the message that their boss wants to see them and selfishly get right up so as not to keep them waiting, she stays put to finish painting the nails of the woman currently in her care. We assume this empathetic nature is a product of doing the same job for someone she loved, but it’s also about understanding the importance of human dignity during circumstances that can quickly cause others to forget it.

So, when the once independent and powerful Mechi takes the news that she’s been given a babysitter poorly, Ana María doesn’t hold it against her. Change isn’t something we accept easily—especially when we know in the back of our minds that it’s necessary and out of our control. Ana María therefore bides her time. She sits in the background (epitomized with great humor during a tea date with three friends wherein one of the guests asks Mechi who the “new girl” is right before the camera cuts to her staring at them from a bench close by) so that she can be ready for whatever might be needed. Whether Mechi forgets her name or neglects to even learn it, Ana María will do her job.

We’re talking about the type of unyielding patience and purpose reserved for a parent. In many ways, Mechi’s deteriorating mental and physical state demands a return to needing a maternal presence as much as a friend considering she’s all alone in this big house now. It isn’t therefore lost on us when everyone asks Ana María if she has other kids. They presume her growing belly isn’t her first and interpret her diligence as a caretaker to be evidence of it. Between their Latin American culture allowing people to boldly proclaim motherless women are being justifiably punished by God and the ease at which grown children turn their attention away from their parents’ wellbeing and onto their children, Ana María and Mechi are two pariahs in a pod.

Maybe that’s why their relationship grows so strong despite its tenuous beginnings. Mechi is everything Ana María has missed since her mother’s passing—someone to give her all to before the baby takes over that role. And Ana María is everything Mechi needs (even if she’s yet to admit as much) since her sons refuse to believe there’s a problem and her daughter has only now accepted one exists. That’s not to say Jimena is a bad person. She simply cannot be expected to watch her mother 24/7 as she would a newborn baby. It doesn’t mean Ana María is replacing her either. Maybe she starts to become the person Mechi gravitates towards first, but we see the love in her eyes every time Jimena appears.

The drama inherent to Mechi’s decline is enough to make Beloved Tropic worthwhile as a solid and affecting fiction narrative debut for Endara, but it’s the universality of its sense of love and loss that allows it to be more. I don’t want to ruin a plot point, but there’s more than meets the eye here as far as mother-to-baby opposite caretaker-to-adult is concerned. Beyond those superficial connections lies the underlying themes of womanhood and compassion and the ways in which society pushes impossible constraints upon them. Ana María is no less of a woman for not yet having a child than the younger soon-to-be mothers she runs into at ultrasounds and in the market. And Mechi is no less of a human being for needing help.

Because the secret at the back of the film isn’t a damning one. Ana María isn’t committing a crime and her lie isn’t intentionally being told for personal gain (even if it might be helpful towards those means, nonetheless). It’s no more damaging than the one Mechi tells herself when she says she’s okay so as not to fully confront her confusion and embarrassment. These are two women that the world would rather pretend don’t exist than to actually do the work to give them the respect they deserve. It only makes sense that they ultimately end up being the ones to see each other and provide that respect themselves. Both Navarrete and García are wonderful—nuanced, heartbreaking, and inspiring in equal measure.

It’s only together that Mechi can reclaim the dignity to hold her head high at the end of her life regardless of the pity given and kid gloves used by those around her. The same is true for Ana María to find it in herself to live life without the noise saying she’s “less than.” Watching them smile and laugh in the rain or quietly smile with understanding in the aftermath of a tough day is to champion what it means to be human. Strip away their finances, immigration statuses, and internalized cultural indoctrination and you find two people unencumbered by anything besides the pure joy of companionship. Beloved Tropic would make a great double feature with The Intouchables as a result.