
It's not easy to talk about a film. One creates the story
but in the end many contribute to that creation. It becomes
the actors' story, the producers', the photographer’s,
the editor's, the musician’s, the sound and art department’s
story. It belongs to all those who contributed to it becoming
this film and not any other. Each of them would summarize
the film differently.
For some it is a film about spirits capable of survival.
For others it is about what they call destiny, chance or
simply God. Or about accepting who one is in order to be
able to live. About light and blindness. About hope.
I will summarize the film's general thrust. What is it about?
That's each individual viewer's
decision.
The
Last Gaze
A white sheet stained with red in a room
in a whorehouse somewhere in the Mexican desert. Somebody
is walking away.
A year earlier
Homero, a very successful artist in Querétaro, finds
out when he’s 48 years old that he has inherited from
his father a strange form of blindness that will cause him
to gradually lose the three light colors, red, blue and
green, and eventually his sight.
Homero understands that fate exists but resists to lose
what has given a direction to his life: art and beauty.
While trying to stay connected to the world while his blindness
progresses, he adopts a stray dog, visits prostitutes and
falls in love with Irma, a nun who helps him memorize texts
to pretend he can still read to his blind father.
In a parallel story, Mei, a 17-year-old girl, arrives at
The China Galleon, an old railway station that has been
converted into a whorehouse in the Mexican desert. Before
leaving for the US, her mother, a famous prostitute, leaves
Mei to work as a servant in exchange for food and lodge
for her and her old grandparents. Mei becomes friendly with
the prostitutes, falls in love with a young store clerk
and raises moths to copy as embroidered works of art to
sell for extra cash.
Homero and Mei fight to survive in their new realities:
Homero in his blindness and Mei in the whorehouse while
their lives touch each other but never cross.
When Homero is about to become completely blind, a taxi
driver offers to take him to a whorehouse with beautiful
Chinese girls. He takes him to The China Galleon where by
chance or fate, Homero’s and Mei’s paths cross
in a room in a whorehouse somewhere in the Mexican desert.