Sundance '20: La Leyenda Negra

*/****

starring Monica Betancourt, Kailei Lopez, Irlanda Moreno, Justin Avila
written and directed by Patricia Vidal Delgado

by Walter Chaw Shot in black-and-white, Patricia Vidal Delgado's La Leyenda Negra is filled with good intentions. It's the story of El Salvadoran Aleteia (Monica Betancourt), a high-school senior studying with a "Temporary Protected Status" that's about to be rescinded under Trump's xenophobic, white-nationalist administration. She has a scholarship to UCLA, the film is quick to remind, but she still has to make it through graduation. Easier said than done when her school's curriculum seems set on teaching antiquated attitudes towards imperialism and the genuine evil of nations that have devastated whole populations in the name of Manifest Destiny. There's a classroom scene where Aleteia corrects her white teacher's pronunciation of her name before laying into her for perpetuating the party line. Aleteia is meanwhile developing a crush on Rosarito (Kailei Lopez--a budding star, perhaps), a shy girl in the sway of a monstrous bully, Monica (Irlanda Moreno), who does not approve of potentially losing an acolyte to the interloper.

It's about immigration and racism, see, and also a coming-of-age film centred around homosexuality/-phobia. It's also about a machismo culture, and the loss of a mother, and class in that the bully is rich and her victims are not (Aleteia's Bartleby-esque catchphrase is "I never go shopping"). Also, the roots and impact of bullying, also the seeds of protest, also, also, also... It's too much. There's not enough time to cover all the ground La Leyenda Negra wants to cover in a season of television, much less a trim, 84-minute feature. Delgado, making her hyphenate feature debut here, tries to say everything at once; while I appreciate the passion, all I really hear at the end is the volume and not the substance. Her cast of largely non-professionals is game, but they're handed pages and pages of stuff that I think might be challenging for even seasoned veterans to pull off. A late development that causes Aleteia to make a sharp turn seems out of character, and it's difficult to know what it is she's wanting to accomplish through her actions.

The picture reminded me a lot of Chris Eyre's Skins, in ways good and bad. Like it, La Leyenda Negra means well--and small moments, such as an exchange on a bus that ends with Rosarita giving Aleteia her phone to put her number in, feel authentic and lived-in. Yet it sacrifices any potential for suture when it's pitched either to the choir or to Get Out white folks wanting to feel like they've given their monthly tithe to the church of popular outrage. Even its title, taken from Julián Juderías's book, speaks to the "unfavourable" image of Spain cultivated throughout the sixteenth-century during a specific period of anti-Protestant reform. Out of context, the use of the term is very specifically a reference to how Spain was unjustly demonized. In the context of the film, I think it's meant to take on the broader meaning that history is always written by the oppressors. But during a scene where Spanish Conquistadores are discussed, suddenly the intent becomes muddy. That's La Leyenda Negra in microcosm, as it happens: it's juggling so much outrage and portent that it doesn't have room to follow any single thread through to its end. Frustrating, because you want it to be better. Programme: NEXT