Aventurera

Aventurera ('Adventuress') is a 1950 Mexican drama film directed by Alberto Gout and starring Ninón Sevilla and Andrea Palma. It's considered a masterpiece of the Rumberas film.

Plot

The quiet life of the young Elena (Ninón Sevilla), changes dramatically when her mother runs off with her lover, causing the suicide of her father. Alone and without resources, she immigrates to Ciudad Juárez, where she unsuccessfully looks for work. On the verge of starvation, Elena agrees to work with Lucio (Tito Junco), suspecting that his offer is a trap for prostitution. She ends up dancing in the cabaret of Rosaura (Andrea Palma), a woman who leads a double life: six months a year she oversees her brothel in Juarez, and the other six months she is a respectable society lady of Guadalajara. Rosaura abuses and deeply humiliates Elena, who ends up running away from her with the help of Lucio, only to have to flee the city when Lucio gets involved in an assault and ends up in prison. Elena decides to start a new life working as a showgirl in Guadalajara. There she meets Mario (Ruben Rojo), a handsome young man who falls for her. Elena accepts his marriage proposal, only to discover, through a bitter twist of fate, that Rosaura is the mother of Mario. Elena decides to continue with her plans as a way of torturing Rosaura and avenge all the evil that caused her. But Lucio escape from prison, complicating the Elena riot situation.

Analysis

The beginning of the film shows that this family is considered to upper class. They are all dressed very nicely and the men are about to go to work, so that shows that they are also of the working class. When Elena comes home she finds that her mother is having an affair and she is so upset that she leaves the house. When she returns she finds her father devastated that Elena’s mother has left them. Her father so upset, he kills himself. Elena is then left alone without any parent figure; she is then considered an orphan. She has no one and has to learn to fend for herself. She has various jobs where all of the men try to abuse her sexually. This foreshadows her future job as a dancer.

When she runs into Lucio, who says he can offer her a job, she agrees to go with him. He then gets her drunk and they go up to Petra’s office. Lucio proceeds to sell Elena as a prostitute for Petra. Elena is then stuck at the house because if she calls the authorities they threaten to hurt her. After working for Petra she begins to let her anger out on the clients and begins to get in more trouble.

She leaves with Lucio and goes to rob a bank he is caught however she leaves un traced. Elena then goes to work in Guadalajara and the cops finds her. He offers her a deal that he will not turn her in if she agrees to let him become he agent. Elena then sneaks away with a guy who has offered to change her life. He wants Elena to be able to turn things around and offers to marry her.

Elena goes with him to his house and is back in the upper class division from where she was born into. The mother of the guy she left with turns out to be the lady who captured her as a prostitute. Elena then does everything she can to cause her grief the way she did to her. She embarrasses her son at their wedding and is trying to have an affair with her husband’s brother. Elena then decides to tell her sons about what her mother actually does. After Elena tells Petra orders Rengo to go and kill her. He however, is in love with her and decides to protect her instead.

Later Elena finds out that her mother is dying, but Elena wants nothing to do with her. She is upset with her for leaving her father. If she would not have left his she would still be in the upper class and would not have had to deal with all the pain that she had to deal with after she was left to fend for herself.

Elena is constantly stuck in the circle of life. She was born in upper class then lost her parents. She had to work for her wages, but the men would sexually abuse her. She finds Lucio who offers her a good job to just be stuck in prostitution. She finds Lucio again to leave prostitution for him to get jailed from robbing a bank. She works as a dancer, then finds a man who is willing to care for her. She then finds herself back in upper class to see that she is back at the house where Petra lives. She then finds out her mother is dying and when she does she has to suffer the pain all over again from losing a parent and the list continues from there. Elena cannot escape the circle of life until the end when Rengo saves Elena’s life from Lucio when Rengo stabs him. Elena in the end is left with a new beginning in her life where she can hopefully start fresh and remain in the upper class with her husband.

Cast

• Ninón Sevilla... Helena Tejero
• Andrea Palma... Rosaura
• Tito Junco... Lucio
• Ruben Rojo... Mario
• Miguel Inclán... Rengo
• Maruja Grifell... Elena's mother
• Pedro Vargas
• Ana María González

Reviews

When Alberto Gout directed Aventurera, the filmmaker already had a solid industrial experience. It is, in fact, in his fourteenth film, for which he was hired by the Calderón studios in order to make a vehicle for showcasing his exclusive actress Ninón Sevilla, who had worked for Calderon studios since Pecadora (1947). Aventurera has the perfect industrial film ingredients that bind to the Rumberas film genre of the 1940s and 1950s: five intermediate sung (with the voices of Ana Maria Gonzalez and Pedro Vargas), three impossible musical numbers (created by Ninón Sevilla), an emblematic story of innocence and perversion. Ninón Sevilla turning crazy all the critics of Cahiers du cinéma, which wrote some of the most ardent pages that have been engaged of any Mexican actress in that journal.^[1]

The film inspired the 1990s and 2000s success stage play produced by the actress Carmen Salinas. The stage production featured the Mexican stars Edith González, Itatí Cantoral, Maribel Guardia and many others.

References

External links

• Aventurera on IMDb