Today’s Los Angeles Times featured an interview with Chris Weitz, the director of a new feature film that reveals one of the many complicated facets of life in the United States without papers.
Titled “A Better Life,” the film revolves around Carlos, an undocumented gardener whose hopes for building a landscaping business – and the means with which to provide a better life for his teenage son – are pinned on the purchase of a used pickup truck. When the truck is stolen, he finds himself in a familiar predicament: A call to police, the norm for anyone else, could be risky. He doesn’t call, and the film follows father and son as they search for their stolen livelihood.
From the interview with Weitz, who is the grandson of Mexican film star Lupita Tovar:
“All he does is work,” Weitz said of Carlos during a break in filming at the bar. “He is invisible — and he prefers to remain invisible. Because to raise his head is to risk getting in trouble.”
To remain in the shadows necessitates concentric circles of concealment. “It might as well be a science-fiction film,” Weitz added of how he and screenwriter Eric Eason tried to reveal the hidden layers of an illegal immigrant’s life. “There are worlds within worlds within worlds — almost a parallel universe.”
I regrettably had to pass on a screening of “A Better Life” last month due to a conflicting assignment, but hope to catch it. It premieres today at the Los Angeles FIlm Festival and opens in a limited release Friday.
Carlos is played by Demián Bichir, a veteran Mexican film star who is perhaps best known to U.S. audiences as the Tijuana mayor in the television series Weeds, and as Fidel Castro in the recent two-part Che film production. There’s also an appearance by the wildly popular L.A. Univision radio host Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo, who plays himself.
