Snakes and Ladders

Country: Mexico 1993
Language: Spanish

Picture from cinemexicano
Details nytimes movies

Seen 4 February 2006
The film starts with the focus on two girls, Valentina and Rebeca playing together. The rest of the film shows how the two girls' lives are intertwined in more ways than one. They had a blood pact when they were younger. They promise each other that they would never separate from each other and remain steadfast to each other for ever. Circumstances dictate otherwise. Events involving both the girls and their respective families make their lives go up and down as in the game of snakes and ladders.
The film also touches on Valentina's long suffering mother, who almost always turns a blind eye to her husband's philandering outside their matrimonial home. That stance came to an end when her husband's latest woman is someone so close to the family. There was a scene after this incident showing Valentina and her mother in the car while beside them a funeral procession was on its way along the same road. The look on the mother and daughter in addition to the funeral procession conveyed so much the feelings of the women at the hands of their beloved husband and father.
The husband in the story is the atypcial Latino man. He believes in the principle that you should always hold your head high in whatever situation. Nevertheless, even he succumbs to the torment of being a loser. His familiar stable family life and good social standing as an aspiring political candidate did not last last long. He had to pay for his past indiscretions in the end.
At the end, the two girls managed to surmount the turmoil of the difficult situation they were facing and remain steadfast friends.