Film Review: LA PACERA: Superb Acting Grounds a Subtle Tale of a Young Woman’s Choice of Death [Sundance 2023]

La Pacera Review

La Pacera (2023) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Glorimar Marrero Sanchez, starring Isel Rodriguez, Modesto Lacen, Magali Parrasquillo, Maximilliano Rivas, Georgina Borri, Anamin Santiago, Carola García, and Nancy Millan.

Glorimar Marrero Sanchez’s examines the choices of a terminally ill young woman’s final days in her first feature, La Pacera (The Fishbowl).

There is no denying the power of writer/director Glorimar Marrero Sanchez’s first feature. It’s a compulsive watch, which is saying something, considering it takes a little while to get one’s bearings, plot wise. The filming style is sort cinéma vérité; the visuals are gritty and brash. The first scene is that of a woman bathing, (Isel Rodriguez) and a surgical wound is one of the first images we see. But it’s in extreme close up and thus hard to determine exactly where it’s located on the torso. Noelia has a gravelly voice, so at first one is tempted to consider a trans operation gone haywire.

Eventually, however, by way of the subtle, evasive dialog (in Spanish) between paramour, friends, and doctor, it becomes more or less obvious that the young woman has had a colostomy (or some sort of fistula), and that she has cancer that has metastasized.

One synopsis actually provides further backstory which is not much in evidence from the film’s narrative. Apparently Noelia had been in remission for a while before the recurrence. This information sheds light on Noelia’s puzzling, rock-ribbed resistance to another grueling round of treatment with little chance for success.

It also makes sense that she opts to enjoy a final bit of freedom rather than submit to smothering support from her well-meaning boyfriend. She wants to get out of “the fishbowl” of good intentions to find eternal rest on her own terms with peace of mind. To this end, Noelia returns to her childhood home on the Vieques Barrios Island of Puerto Rico, where her mother, Flora, still resides. Unfortunately, she also leaves behind access to rare medication that gives her some palliative comfort.

At about this point the plot gradually begins to gel. We have already figured that Noelia wants to be with family during her demise, and affection between mother and daughter shows remarkable authenticity.

Now a subtext grounds the plot in a greater issue. Flora realizes that her daughter is dying from the disease she knew little or nothing about; Noelia discovers Flora’s activism in what appears to be some sort of underground guerilla movement. Those in the audience (this reviewer included) may assume there’s a banana republic style coup going on.

And they would be wrong.

Flora has joined a grass-roots protest targeting the U.S. military’s role in munitions testing using depleted uranium during and after World War II — in fact a hotbed issue demanding that the Defense Department clean up the radioactive waste surrounding the island. Many activists had been arrested over the years, including celebrities, among them Jimmy Smits and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú.

Ms. Sanchez’s subtle approach may lose some traction to a mainstream audience. But focusing on Noelia’s intimate point of view has more poignancy than political underpinnings established at the beginning. Thus the unblinking footage of Noelia’s suffering is hard to shake off. We’re also more apt to forgive Flora’s militant commander’s refusal to get Noelia’s precious medication at the risk of undermining the latest spate of protests.

The rationale behind Noelia’s last wish is also a bit puzzling: to lie in a bathtub on the beach and get swept up in an approaching hurricane. This could represent an added jibe at the United States government’s tepid response to Hurricane Maria. Or, maybe, a symbolic baptism, Mother Nature washing away the sins of war . . . who knows? But it is a sensational ending to a film that lingers strong in the memory.

Rating: 8.75/10

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