Devil Between the Legs
Original title: El Diablo entre las Piernas
2019 | 147 minutes | Mexico, Spain
Director: Arturo Ripstein
Writer: Paz Alicia Garciadiego
Language: Spanish
Toronto International Film Festival, 2019
Legendary Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein’s latest film (the CFI presented his Such Is Life at our 2003 Latin American Film Festival), is a shimmering black and white and twisted valentine to love and to its more intense cousin, l’amour fou. Revolving around an idiosyncratic old couple, Beatriz and the Old Man, Devil Between The Legs unfolds as an unflinching, surprising portrait of how time’s passage affects human desire in general, and this couple’s relationship in particular.
While the Old Man, a retired homeopathic pharmacist, drifts around their couple’s Mexico City home grumbling about Beatriz when not paying secret visits to his mistress, Beatriz decides to take private tango lessons and realize her own carnal desires by pursuing her dance partner, a much younger man. Their now adult children long gone, the only person to watch over this strange, relentlessly combative elderly couple is their young maid, Dinorah, who will eventually decide to take action to change things.
At once darkly unsettling, eccentrically amusing, and strangely moving, director Arturo Ripstein and screenwriter Paz Garcíadiego’s latest daring cinematic collaboration is a frank exploration of sex, love, and everything that lies in between. At any age.
- Tom McSorley
Preceded by the short film
Contributions
Marc finds himself caught in a maelstrom of family conflict and gender politics while seeking companionship one night in downtown Ottawa.
Paired with Devil Between the Legs, Contributions complements questions of late-life sexuality, inner demons and outer acceptance raised in the feature.