The Queen of the Night

The film is an imaginary biography of one of Mexico’s most famous singers, Lucha Reyes, told as a fresco which unfolds during the years 1939 to 1944. We observe the rise and fall of a woman who, after an unsuccessful attempt as an opera singer, decides to focus instead on folk songs known as rancheras. While these were more the domain of male performers, Lucha manages to introduce her own style to the genre. Although she was not politically active like Frida Kahlo or Tina Modotti, she is still one of Mexico’s three biggest icons of the first half of the 20th century. She took her rancheras away from the rural environment and introduced them to city audiences, she brought in elements of the bolero, and added the melancholy and despair of the era to the lyrics and to her own vocal expression. Like her female contemporaries, she, too, did away with period conventions. Her lesbian relationship, carefree life and love of alcohol never failed to provoke. The plot generally avoids period contexts and descriptions of specific relationships, instead very gradually uncovering the dark side of the melodrama, albeit with a hint of kitsch (part of the folklore of mariachi musicians). The screenwriter labels this genre as an anti-melodrama, thus certain scenes seem almost grotesque while, at the same time, they appear to develop by force of gravity. Various features typical for melodrama are here pushed to extremes, such as the relationship between mother and daughter. The very conception of this icon of Mexican folk culture is itself heretical. We are witness to the self-destructive process, but decadence is one of the key attributes of a large part of Ripstein’s oeuvre.