Once upon a time in Mexico

There’s a certain glorification of Mexican drug cartels in film and television that is kind of fascinating. Even the TV show Breaking Bad, which has been hailed as an accurate depiction of the mechanics of cartels, has an undeniable coolness factor that helps make it so popular.

The best example, though, is Mexican narco cinema, a genre of cheaply made B-movies about drug cartels that fill shelves in video rental chains in border states like Texas. These films feature real-life figures and are full of sex, guns, betrayal and excitement.

This context makes Gerardo Naranjo’s 2011 film Miss Bala, which is screening this weekend at Portland State’s 5th Avenue Cinema, even more striking.

Loosely based on a true story, the film follows a young woman named Laura, played by Stephanie Sigman, who lives in Tijuana with her father and young brother and who dreams of being a beauty pageant queen. When she meets a drug trafficker named Lino (Noe Hernandez), she becomes a criminal decoy whose Miss Baja California victory is rigged.

Notable for its unflinching portrayal of so-called narco-drama, Miss Bala is not afraid to be ugly and uncomfortable. Sigman’s performance is both understated and groundbreaking, and she has an incredible charisma that often carries the narrative.

Sigman has the ability to look like any other girl and yet own the screen. It’s hard not to feel for Laura from the beginning, even if you don’t know very much about her culture.

Though it’s obviously a movie about the horrors of drug cartels, there is an underlying message about what it means to be a Mexican woman that I actually wish wasn’t so underlying, because it’s at least as compelling an issue as drug trafficking. Laura is used by Lino, his men and his enemies in every possible way: In some scenes, she might as well be a slave—or a pack mule.

In the sequence that provides the image used on the film’s poster, Lino duct-tapes drug money to Laura’s waist and sends her across the border. We see her being dressed, undressed, ordered around, even physically moved and then discarded—you have to wonder whether her desire to be a beauty queen is also a statement about women in Mexico.

Laura has never considered herself anything more than an ornament. All the men in the movie to which she’s not related treat her with an air of unexplained contempt, or they simply emphasize her meaninglessness. And yet Laura displays remarkable bravery and fortitude throughout the film, which could go easily unnoticed.

The real-life Miss Bala was Laura Zuniga, who was arrested in December 2008 in a vehicle with seven men that also contained two rifles, three handguns, 16 cell phones and more than $50,000 in cash.

Zuniga claimed she was kidnapped by her boyfriend, a cartel leader, and had no idea he was involved in crime. She was stripped of her Miss Mexico International title, though the government found no evidence linking her to illegal activity.

While Zuniga is still a working model, the ending of Miss Bala is much more ambiguous and may be difficult to understand. If you’re one of those viewers who needs to grasp every detail of the plot, the inner workings of Lino’s gang might be hard to follow at times.

I think the realistic depiction of Mexico is undoubtedly worth the watch, though. It reminded me of Michel Franco’s Daniel & Ana, and although that film is about upper-class characters in Mexico City instead of poor ones in Tijuana, the two films’ depictions of lawless, brutal corruption are similar in tone.

In the end, what Naranjo is trying to emphasize is how many people die every year because of drug cartels. But the more important aspect of his film and others like it is the dehumanization of innocent people for money.

I imagine people flocking to narco cinema the same way they read dime novels about Jesse James in the Old West, thinking there’s something romantic and admirable about the most heinous of crimes.

Of course, I don’t judge that thinking at all: I like glorified violence. I like gangster stories that are fun and surreal, and I appreciate the fascination.

But I also like that there are filmmakers out there who tell stories like these, highlighting the actual victims in Mexico, where the criminals seem to have more power than the political leaders.

Even more than that, Miss Bala shows us that film has the power to open windows to worlds we never imagined we could see up close.