Miss Bala

Miss Bala

Cinematic release poster
Directed by Gerardo Naranjo
Produced by Pablo Cruz
Written by Gerardo Naranjo
Mauricio Katz
Starring Stephanie Sigman
Music by Emilio Kauderer
Cinematography Mátyás Erdély
Edited by Gerardo Naranjo
Production
company
Canana Films
Distributed by 20th Century Fox (Mexico)
Release dates
  • 13 May 2011 (2011-05-13) (Cannes)
  • 9 September 2011 (2011-09-09) (Mexico)
Running time
 113 minutes[1]
Country Mexico
Language Spanish

Miss Bala is a 2011 Mexican drama film written by Gerardo Naranjo with Mauricio Katz and directed by Gerardo Naranjo. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[2][3] The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards,[4][5] but it did not make the final shortlist.[6]

Plot

23-year-old Laura Guerrero (Sigman) lives with her father Ramón (Javier Zaragoza) and little brother Arturo (Juan Carlos Galván). Laura and her friend Suzu (Lakshmi Picazo) both enter the competition for the Miss Baja beauty pageant. They go to the Millennium Night Club, where Suzu meets her boyfriend Javi (Hugo Márquez). However, when Laura goes into the bathroom, she witnesses members of the La Estrella gang causing chaos by shooting randomly into the club. Frantic, she tries to search for Suzu, and as a result fails to show up for the early rehearsal for the pageant, and is ejected from the competition.

She is then kidnapped by the leader of the La Estrella gang, Lino (Noé Hernández), and the gang also kidnap her brother and father as bargaining chips to control her. Laura is used by the gang for criminal missions, including transporting drug money across the US border, and luring out a DEA agent who has infiltrated the organization (José Yenque).

The climax of the film occurs after Laura wins the Miss Baja contest. The gang uses her to seduce a prominent military general (Miguel Courtrier); but she switches sides when she learns that Suzu had been a casualty in the nightclub shooting. She manages to survive the ensuing shoot-out but is captured by the military and paraded as a member of the gang.

In the final scene Laura is taken away by the police and dropped off at an undisclosed location.

Cast

Real life incident

Miss Bala is loosely based on a real incident, in which 2008’s Miss Sinaloa, Laura Zúñiga, was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled with munitions outside Guadalajara, Jalisco. The film suggests her pageant victory was blatantly fixed by criminal elements. In an interview with Complex Magazine, director Gerardo Naranjo said that he had met Zuniga, but that "I really didn’t want to go into their psyches. I guess the film has a very strong point-of-view, and we refuse to get into the minds of these guys, because I think that’s what every other movie does… I wanted to live the experience from the point-of-view of an innocent person."[7]

Reception

On its release at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Miss Bala received widespread critical acclaim.[8] Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 89% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 61 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10, making the film a "Certified Fresh" on the website's rating system.[9] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 80, based on 22 reviews, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews".[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Miss Bala << British Board of Film Classification". British Board of Film Classification. 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
  2. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Official Selection". Cannes. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
  3. ↑ "Cannes film festival 2011: The full lineup". guardian.co.uk (London). 2011-04-14. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
  4. ↑ Hecht, John (2011-09-22). "'Miss Bala' Crowned Mexico's Foreign-Language Oscar Submission". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-09-22.
  5. ↑ "63 Countries Vie for 2011 Foreign Language Film Oscar". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-14.
  6. ↑ "9 Foreign Language Films Vie for Oscar". Retrieved 2012-01-19.
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Kaufman, Anthony (2011-05-15). "‘Miss Bala’ Subverts Criminal Thriller Genre at Cannes 2011". The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones & Company). Retrieved 2011-05-19.
  9. ↑ "Miss Bala - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved January 16, 2011.
  10. ↑ "Miss Bala Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More at Metacritic". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved January 16, 2011.

External links

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