HUESERA
After repeated attempts in between the sheets, Valeria and Raúl have finally succeeded: there’s a baby on the way! The beginning of her pregnancy is a walk in the park, with the choice of the crib, the color of the walls and all those little lovely touches. But one night Valeria sees her neighbor across the street jump off the balcony. The sound of shattering bones is harrowing, but when Raúl comes to see what’s going on the body is no longer there. Oh well, must be those damned pregnancy hormones, right? Or a prenatal depression? But the strange incidents go crescendo, as well as the army of rationalizing, medical reasons with which her complaints are minimized. Yet her suffering continues, with ever stronger, lurid hallucinations. Everyone, her boyfriend included, write her off as out of her mind. Everyone, except her aunt who tells her about the curse of la Huesera. And that’s a lot worse than a couple of hormones running wild…
It’s incredible how director Michelle Garza Cervera can breathe such evocative power into her debut feature. HUESERA tackles a very polarizing theme – the rejection of motherhood – through the prism of Mexican folklore. A film that gets under your skin (even more so if you have little‘uns yourself) laying its black spider eggs there until they hatch. An uppercut that is as visually as it is psychologically shocking, and that puts Cervera on the same center stage in terms of raw talent as a certain Issa López…