Ripstein is México's most respected filmmaker. He belongs to the 1970's generation responsible for the so-called "new Mexican cinema", which produced some great works, as Paul Leduc's "Reed: México insurgente" and Felipe Cazals' "Canoa". Ripstein was one of the first to gain recognition with his very good B&W film, "Tiempo de morir" (1965), written directly for the screen by Gabriel García Márquez, with dialogues by Carlos Fuentes. It has rained a lot between this movie and his 1999 screen adaptation of García Márquez' novel "El coronel no tiene quien le escriba". In the meantime, he married screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego, and since their first collaboration, "El imperio de la fortuna" (1986, after Juan Rulfo's story "El gallo de oro"), Ripstein's cinematic world has become overblown, slow, morbid, grotesque and misanthropic. One cannot blame Garciadiego for this, but she surely has a lot to do with it. "Profundo carmesí" (1996), their remake of the story told in "The Honeymoon Killers", is a good example of this couple's peculiar taste. In "La perdición de los hombres" and "Así es la vida" (both 2000), Ripstein once again enters the world of misery, though his characters are not precisely outcasts, as the fat nurse and her gigolo lover. This time he returns to his early free-style as he tells the stories of normal people, who choose weird solutions to their predicaments and whose dreams occupy on the screen the same space, an in the same tone and register, as their daily actions. If "La perdición de los hombres" is fine, things do not work that well with "Así es la vida", based on the myth of Medea as told by Roman playwright-moralist Seneca. While Euripides was sort of questioning polytheism in his tragedies, Seneca -born almost 500 years later- lived in the midst of the origins of Christianity, so the "moira" (destiny) and the Olympus gods were at stake. Medea (so admired by feminists) has never escaped criticism as a character that hardly can claim that Zeus or Destiny forced her to commit her crimes. Garciadiego knows this, so in trying to adapt the story to contemporary times, she introduces telling images of dysfunctionality (her Julia/Medea is viciously abusing herself because of her addictive relationship), but the screenwriter is at odds when she deals (she rather does not) with the religious and magic thoughts that impelled Medea's original actions: in this version they are almost absent. Julia/Medea (Arcelia Ramírez in a very good performance, considering what Ripstein and Garciadiego put her through) does practice "witchcraft" (by performing cheap abortions and silly spells), she has visions of her rival being destroyed by fire, and though Ripstein recurrently introduces the image of a golden van running through México City streets, there's no magic and nothing makes much sense, the less when Julia/Medea leaves home in a yellow taxi, as if nothing... On the other hand, Garciadiego's misanthropy is useful to explain Nicolás/Jason's actions, as in a very good sequence when Nicolás/Jason (Luis Felipe Tovar, a young Mexican Christopher Lee who seems to be in most Mexican movie these days) declares the "macho manifesto" while boxing. Wonderful Patricia Reyes Spíndola is also at hand and repeats her characterization from "La perdición de los hombres", this time as Julia/Medea's godmother, but I could not help feeling like a pitiless voyeur, watching these low class characters being described with so much ridicule and lack of sympathy.

Of course it´s Ripstein. A great mexican director. In this movie he makes a very personal adaptation, to the México of our times, of the classical greek tragedy MEDEA. With a very sordid scenario and a really complex narrative. Using a TV like flashbacks and thoughts of the characters and like the place for the mariachis that plays the role of the classical Chorus of the greek theatre, this movie is a real masterpiece of our times.This, is the first movie of latin american that has been made in a DV format. And this shows a possible future for the low budget productions.

Así es la vida is the first latin american digital film transfered to 35mm. For those who didn't understand it, it's a contemporary version of Sénecas' Medea, a greek tragedy. So don't complain about the script because that was the intention of all that complex language. Based on this story, the film is excellent, the scenario and the ambient are very well mixed with the movement of the camera, so you get long scenes but not monotonous. For me, displaying the trio as a the chorus of a greek play was an excellent idea. Although is a little strange film, a Ripstein's film, for me the way they treated the character of Julia wasn't that strange. How she remains homeless happens at least here in Mexico City, how she is cheated, etc. So it's curious how a very old tragedy it's well adapted to our days. So, finally, it's a very good experiment in digital video, it's a simple story maybe, but with a lot of details on it.

I was so enthusiastic for this film... before seeing it. "Así es la vida" is the first latin american commercially released film shot on digital video (Pal system, of course) and, beyond that technical achievement, it´s of little interest. The movie shows (and, as usual in Ripstein, into a sordid scenario) a woman complaining and punishing herself because her husband left her and went away with another (younger) woman. When the man comes back for taking the kids with him, then she will decide how to take revenge...I think the question here is: how long, as a viewer, can you stand a woman complaining without anything actually happening? Certainly there is no dramatic progression -perhaps the film would have worked better if the story showed this couple from the beginning of the relationship so we could follow their degradation- and the characters are so cliché... it´s obvious Ripstein here is using the sordid elements not to reveal the depths of his characters but simply to shock us gratuitously. As always the dialogs are soup-opera kind, but here they just don´t work and seem a little pretentious. Visually, the film lacks appeal. The director uses long one-shot takes that give the movie a monotonous feeling. Anyway, I must say that the election of the DV -with all its imperfections- as format helps a lot to build the atmosphere and the decoration is just brilliant.Some OKs, like using the tv and the musical group to show the feelings of the characters, a very funny take (above all, the film has a certain black humor that I appreciate) where we see the very same Ripstein through a mirror, don´t save this picture. By the way, it feels like he has seen Von Trier´s "Breaking the waves" a lot... If you have seen Ripstein´s best "Principio y Fin" then you have already seen "Así es la vida". Hmmm.