A Carnivalesque Films production. Executive producers, Deborah Smith, Dale Smith. Produced, directed, edited by David Redmon, Ashley Sabin.
With: Cecy Ramirez, Camilo Ramirez.
Latest effort by documakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin ("Kamp Katrina") is an intimate portrait of a young Mexican couple's efforts to earn enough money in a large city to fulfill their dreams of buying land and building a house. Aptly titled "Intimidad" has the sympathetic specificity of a homemovie. Still, one can extrapolate universal themes and verities from this slow-moving but ultimately uplifting pic, best suited for homevid and niche-cable venues.
Opening minutes introduce Cecy and Camilo Ramirez as subsistence-wage factory workers in Reynosa, an industrial center near the Tex-Mex border. She makes bras for Victoria's Secret; he manufactures fire hydrants for U.S. cities -- and both long to be with their toddler daughter, who's being raised back in their small hometown. Cecy ultimately returns home to be with her child and care for her ailing father, but Camilo doggedly carries on to raise sufficient capital for their homestead. "Intimidad" seems an incomplete picture -- auds may imagine couple's tearful confrontations or heated arguments off-camera -- but the final scenes satisfy, showing how even small victories can be savored. Mix of video and 16mm is artfully balanced.
Camera (color, HD, 16mm), Redmon, Sabin, Tatiana McCabe; music, Eric Taxier. Reviewed on DVD, Houston, March 21, 2008. (In SXSW Film Festival -- Lone Star Stories.) Spanish dialogue. Running time: 71 MIN.
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