Perfume de Violetas

'Perfume de Violetas' is a powerful new film from Mexico about two schoolgirls who find that their strong friendship is not enough to withstand the socio-economic barriers that keep them apart. Yessica (Ximena Ayala) is a troubled, rebellious girl living in a slum tenement which her mother can barely afford to rent. Miriam's mother, on the other hand, has managed to work her way out of the poverty trap, and lives in a nice apartment on the other side of town. Yessica is immediately drawn to Miriam at school, and the fact that both have lost their fathers serves to cement their friendship; but it soon becomes clear that theirs cannot be a relationship of equals, and with abuse, rape and theft thrown into the mix, a tragic conclusion of one sort or another becomes inevitable.

The title 'Perfume de Violetas' alludes to the luxury violet perfume worn by Miriam which first attracts Yessica to her, and which Miriam at first shares with her new friend. This perfume comes to symbolise the means available, to those like Miriam who can afford it, to cover over the more unsavoury aspects of life, and indeed odour and cleanliness are a recurring motif in the film. When Yessica first visits Miriam's home, she is amazed to see that it has a bath, and insists that they wash together at once; and later Yessica is taunted by others for her bad smell.

At home Yessica's mother and brother tell her off for stinking when she wets the bed, but neither pauses to consider whether there might be some connection between such behaviour in an adolescent girl, and the presence in the home of a brutish, lascivious stepfather. And after she is raped by her brother's friend, so that her skirt becomes bloody, she is ridiculed by schoolmates and scolded by teachers for her poor personal hygiene, with no-one caring enough to ask for her side of the story. Even when Miriam tells her mother the truth of what has happened to Yessica, the mother says that Yessica must have provoked it, because she's a 'whore' - a term which Yessica's own mother, and even Miriam herself, will later use of Yessica.

When 'Perfume de Violetas' was first released in Mexico, it had the additional title 'Nadie te Oye', or 'No-one is listening', and this is precisely what the film is about: a deplorable world where those who have money seal themselves off from the stench of others, and those who live in deprivation are neglected and disregarded. Yet the harrowing final scene of 'Perfume de Violetas' contains a stark warning: that the injustices of impoverishment will not, if ignored, simply go away, but will come back to haunt everyone.

Despite the limitations of its budget, this film takes on big issues with great integrity.

Anton Bitel