User Reviews

This engaging and brooding film titled "Ave Maria" boasts a strong cast and a simple but adequate production design . A thought-provoking fim set in 1659 , Nueva España, story opens as gorgeous novice Maria Ines (promising newcomer Tere Lopez Tarin) is visited Daniel Simon (Demian Bichir), who brings her gifts including a telescope which she can use to pursue her interest in astronomy. A full-fledged Renaissance woman, Maria Ines is also an expert in cartography and botany. Although her quest for knowledge doesn't sit well with Father Serra (Alfredo Sevilla) and the other friars of the mission, they put up with it since her father, a duke, is a bigwig in the Spanish court. But tragedy strikes when Maria Ines' father commits suicide, resulting in the cancelation of all her privileges and her demotion to performing menial tasks. In its second half, suffering a breakdown, the young woman starts to hear voices and obsessively scrubs the chapel's floor. Meanwhile back in the convent, fiendish Father Cuna (Damian Alcazar) in connivance with the Spanish military , launches a campaign to stop the do-gooder. But tragedy for Maria Ines lies just around the corner. Intelligence was her crime, Intolerance her enemy ¡.

Enjoyable ,agreeable film , though packing some flaws and gaps , set in 17th century about religious issues such as intolerance , fatalism and bigotry . Regarding a brave and valiant woman : Maria Ines who eventually becomes a loving , saintly figure, exercising her healing powers to help the plague-ridden natives. A charming if modest production values with nice photography in colonial religious paintings style help compensate for storyline troubles . Rossoff's stilted filmmaking fails to provide the complex development that the conflict needs , but overstating some of the emotions . A provoking and thoughtful picture in which Camille Thomasson's script renders most of the one-dimensional roles though giving poignant turns, as well as lacking motivation for their actions . Concerning the thorny theme of progressive womanhood at odds with a backward mentality turns into a schematic opposition between good and evil . Interpretations are uniformly good, in her first starring character, Lopez Tarin gives an appropriate acting as a strange woman who has a mystic revelation moving to forsake her wealthy inheritance and leave the convent in search of her mother's Indian roots . While Damian Alcazar arranges to lend some depth to the main villain , a fanatic friar . To its credit, an attractive cast manages to turn the cliches into believable human beings and a decent support cast formed by Mexican actors as Demián Bichir as a dashing trader , Alfredo Sevilla as the poisoned Serra and Spanish ones as Juán Diego Botto as the enamored priest and special mention for Ana Torrent as a resentful nun who later turns to Maria's cause.

Veteran cinematographer Henner Hofmann has done here one of his greatest works as an expert cameraman , with suggestive colors and picturesque frames . And shot on location in Hidalgo, Mexico. The prestigious Spanish musician Carles Cases composes a sacred soundtrack , adding operistic music and religious sounds . This interesting period piece was profesionally directed by Eduardo Rossoff , although uneven at times and written by notorious writer: Camille Thomasson who also wrote another religious story : Luther by Eric Till . First-time director Eduardo Rossoff tells his tale with an academic correctness and skillness enough that at times works against its dramatic potential. Pic could find its audience on the arthouse circuit and in Hispanic festivals in which it got some nominations and awards such as : Ariel Awards, Mexico 2000 Nominee Silver Ariel Best Set Design Melo Hinojosa, Best Actor in a Minor Role Luis de Icaza , Best Actress in a Minor Role Ana Ofelia Murguía Best Supporting Actor Alfredo Sevilla , Havana Film Festival 1999 Winner Best Director Eduardo Rossoff , Winner Coral Best First Work Eduardo Rossoff , Mar del Plata Film Festival 1999 Nominee Best Film International Competition Eduardo Rossoff , Newport Beach Film Festival 2000 Winner Audience Award Feature Film.

The stunning actress Tere Lopez Tarin portrays both a privileged aristocrat who speaks out of turn and acts in a brazen fashion and also the saintly Maria who cures Indians of small pox and battles the conquistadors. She performs her dynamic role sedately and through her stoic behavior the viewer is allowed to feel the intensity of her turmoil. I hope to see Tarin in more films in the future, as she is one of those actresses that go beyond just decorating the screen. She takes on a challenging role while masterfully rendering her character into flesh and blood.

Ave Maria is a passionate historical film that recalls the Mexican hit Like Water For Chocolate, Bunuel's Viridiana and other Spanish language classics. The film proves to be more than a historical epic, as it is a history lesson that reveals the corruption of the Catholic church during the middle ages. Although most of us have forgotten or never knew about the atrocities that took place during the Spanish Inquisition or the extermination of the indigenous people of the New World, this film forces us to take a closer look.

I had the opportunity of watching this film in several Film Festivals. My opinion of Newcomer Tere Lopez-Tarin was no different from the general opinion. The audience is captivated once she's on screen. Her presence has an impact that I hadn't seen in a long time. She carries the character to the best in each face during the film, and accomplishes to maintain the rhythm of it, which has frequent flaws. It seems to me that, without the great, delighting performance of Lopez-Tarin, even the well known cast that includes the best Mexican and Spaniards Actors, keeps falling due to a lack of perception from former commercial cameraman, Eduardo Rossoff. I now consider myself a fan of Lopez-Tarin, whose intense, yet never melodramatic, performance got her to lead her next film, THE PEARL, based on Nobel Award Winner, John Steinbeck's novel, opposite Lukas Haas and maybe the last performance yet to be seen on screen, of Sir Richard Harris. And on top of a great performance, she's a fine, elegant, yet edgy girl. The latest I heard, is that she was leading her third American feature. Keep an eye on her. She has everything to be the next Julia Roberts.

I don't think this movie should run up for the Oscar, but it's a nice piece of work from the mexican cinema that was almost death a few years ago. It has a nice cinematography with some influence of mexican director Gabriel Retes. The history is good but Lopez Tarin's performance is barely good.

I accompanied a pair of good friends, so I didn't know about what this movie was (neither I wanted to see it :) ), once that it finished I was positively impressed. I only detected one big and laughable sequence, it is when Maria it is arrested and accused of being a Witch by that despicable Father Cuña, the entire sequence seemed to have been shot with a Handheld Camcorder, even I would have obtained a still shot, well.

Maria is a mestizo woman who is deprived of her passion: science, books, the stars, her flowers. Because all these are things that are of no concern for a woman, after having received a vision from her indian ancestors she decides to follow a new cause: to take care of the indians, she and the other sisters of her religious order take care of a nearby indian village, and soon the word it is spread among the poor indians because she takes care of them as a loving mother, they begin to call her "Divine ray of light". This calls the attention of the now Bishop Cuña (he did a capital offense to achieve the degree of Bishop) and accuses her of wizardry and insurrection and gets her burned.

All the indians attend to her execution and there a myth it is born...At once a priest takes advantage of it: "We must order to paint an image of her!"