[Review] The Legend of La Llorona
If you listen to “La Llorona”, the melody, moving from note to note with a deep-rooted melancholy that traverses worlds, might cause your heart to feel a little heavier. As a shared tale though, “La Leyenda de La Llorona” is not known only for its sadness; it is often recalled by many as a story of warning told throughout childhood.
The story originated in Mexico and is known across Latine culture in forms that sometimes follow and sometimes divert from its elusive origin, depending on who tells it. For instance, the earliest memory I have of hearing the story was when I was a teen living in Los Angeles. Somehow, I had managed to get to one of the beaches at night with friends, and as the cliffs that overlooked the dark waters hit the sand with force, the story was told. La Llorona is the ghost of a woman who died waiting at the cliffs for the man she loved⸺a man who promised her everything and left her with nothing. She takes children as revenge on the community who disapproved of their union and caused their separation, thus leading to her cursed death. Some nights, someone might see her ghost wailing and floating while wearing the white wedding dress she died in. What is of interest is how La Llorona traveled to Los Angeles and haunted the beach cliffs at night, ready to terrify the unlucky spectator who gets a rare glimpse into her grief. Since “La Leyenda de La Llorona” has more unknowns than knowns, how she appears in one’s life depends on who the teller is.
Source: IMDB
The Legend of La Llorona, directed by Patricia Harris Seeley, tells a vastly different story from the one I learned and follows many of the markers of the original story. Seeley’s representation of this ageless tale revisits the themes of love, betrayal, and motherhood in relation to more current issues of immigration and child labor/trafficking, which is necessary even though the film only scratches the surface of these issues. The opening scene starts this conversation, but its haste and redirection to a new family left me with unanswered questions. Occasionally, answers are discovered along the way, but not without the creation of more moments that left me confused.
The film mostly focuses on the story of The Candlewood family, who arrive in Mexico with hopes of a “change of scenery” that is not really for business or pleasure. Eventually, we learn that the family is using the trip to process their grief in hopes of staying united rather than being destroyed by it. The Candlewood family is made up of Carly (Autumn Reeser), Andrew (Antonio Cupo), and their son Danny (Nicolas Madrazo), and they are immediately driven into the supernatural world of La Llorona as well as the more realistic threats of a new environment. In one scene, the family passes a wall covered with “Se Busca” flyers that have pictures of children who have gone missing in the area. Before this, their driver, Jorge (Danny Trejo), says there are bad guys there, while passing a group of cartel members, just as there are bad guys everywhere. Jorge gets them to their destination safely where they meet Veronica (Angélica Lara), the host of la hacienda they are staying at. She welcomes their arrival wholeheartedly though she shows concern about Danny’s presence.
Source: IMDB
What follows their arrival is a retelling of the legend, which attempts to philosophize about the limits of a mother’s grief, but loses focus by letting other storylines intervene. At one point in the film, La Llorona’s (Zamia Fandiño) origin tale as Maria is shown occurring in the 1800s, and it is one of the strongest representations in this film. Due to its commentary on motherhood at a time when children were taken from their unwed mothers if it meant the father’s legacy would survive, the scene is one of the few instances where the film manages to converge emotional depth with the strange but modern events the Candlewoods experience. However, the mixture of occasional silly undertones, family drama, and sporadic scares prevents the film from committing to one intent, which lessens the power of La Llorona’s story.
The film could still serve as a family-oriented depiction of the legend from which discussions of its several themes could happen. But if you, like me, were waiting on something eerier, haunting, and horrifying because of the threat she symbolizes to the innocent, then you might find yourself questioning what is missing. Overall, The Legend of La Llorona identifies how La Llorona continues executing her endless revenge in a manner that reaches more than the people of the community of origin, which is a subversive and frightening aspect of this film that is left drowning in the water.