I loved this film! What a wonderful tribute to women and their power through love and strength!
The opening scene is amazing. The cemetery is filled with the women cleaning the head stones of mostly dead family men, because as the women explained, they outlive the men. This scene has a double meaning. First meaning is that sure, women outlive their men, that is just a fact. The other meaning is deeper: no matter what men do to women, they have the strength and power to survive and outlive the tragic life events. At the end if the women stick together their power is unstoppable. The rest of the film following the cemetery scene is a tribute to the message revealed at the beginning. All the women in this film are so close to each. You, as the viewer almost feel privileged to be invited to take a peek at their world and their stories. I do believe that the strong connection between these women comes as a part of Hispanic culture. The women lived through some tragic and chaotic events in their lives: father raping a daughter and getting her pregnant; tragic loss of parents; cancer; old age and inability to take care of yourself.
As night comes after a day, the same way superstition follows Hispanic culture. Good example of that was the East wind that would make people act crazy. I believe that the wind was used as an excuse of irrational and shocking things people do, but we as humans, do not want to always believe that we are capable of that. Another superstition used in this film was that dead people souls come back to earth to finish what was left unfinished or to correct the mistakes they made while living. In this case Raimunda’s mother was thought to come back from the dead. As it appeared she was never dead just hiding and letting everybody think that she was dead. She did have some things to correct in her life like not knowing or noticing that Raimunda was being molested by her own farther. She wanted Raimunda’s forgiveness. In the end, the women figured it all out and once again kept on being strong and together.