Foreign Pick: Entre Nose
Even college graduates have an extremely difficult time adjusting and scoring job offers when they immigrate to the United States. Without a work permit or a Visa, they are stranded in a foreign land that was once described to them as the epitome of freedom. One of my mom’s closest friends, a former manager at a phone company in Peru, got live-in maid gig in Orlando, where her employers constantly abused her physically and emotionally.
Yet I’ve heard and seen worse.
Take the protagonist of Entre Nos, for example. Mariana, a Colombian mother of two, finds herself at wits end as she is abandoned by her neglectful, unfaithful husband, who had initially dragged their entire family to New York in order to pursue a better life. Uneducated, unprepared, and unable to speak English, a pregnant Mariana falls behind on rent to the point of eviction, gets constantly mocked and ridiculed as she sells her empanadas across town, and ends up collecting garbage with her children in order to receive the slightest hint of income. Ten-year old Gabriel, her firstborn, is forced to cut his childhood short and enter adulthood in order to take care of Andrea, his six-year old sister, while their mother figures out ways to support them.
Entre Nos deals with overcoming adversity in a foreign country, immigration, abandonment and poverty in the streets of NYC, but it mostly tackles family life from a South American viewpoint. The relationships between the main characters serve as the film’s foundation. Needless to say, the performances are nothing short of brilliant. Given her theatre background, co-director Paola Mendoza — who plays Mariana as well — gets the best out of debutants Sebastian Villada and Laura Montana Cortez.
I’ve got deep admiration for Entre Nos. If you’re looking for a feel-good movie, however, this is not it.