Module 4- Lesther Papa

Critical Reflection: Santa Santita

As I was watching this movie I noticed that there were a lot of religious/biblical allusions made and that help set the mood for the beginning of the film. In the movie itself there was even more emphasis put on religion because of the setting. The massive cathedral that helps open the movie is an example of this.
The film itself had a lot of really striking elements to it that made the film especially interesting. The first element was the way the main character, Malen, and her mother interacted. They were completely different people. Malen’s mother was pious, conservative, and wanted Malen to be more like her or even become a saint while Malen was abrasive, dressed in sexy outfits, and often rebelled against her mother. This rebellion is exactly what made her to run away with a guy she just met at the cathedral, Mike, triggering the first major event. Malen’s mother prayed for her daughter to become a saint and later died. When Malen eventually came back and found out what happened she couldn’t even cry because she was so shocked.
This meant that Malen now has to do everything on her own and she had to support herself. She did so by means of taking over her mother’s position as a prayer girl in the cathedral. Her only motive was money, not devotion like her mother, but after praying for a few people they came back saying it worked and claimed she was a saint. She didn’t believe this at all but soon more and more people came to her seeking for her help. Later she accepts that somehow she can help these people and changes her attitude by losing her abrasiveness and rebelliousness in exchange for caring and helping. This is the second element I thought that was especially salient because her changes happened through whatever the people were saying about her. I think one of the main reasons Malen changed at all was because of what the people she helped project onto her. The people she helped expected her to be a saint and that’s exactly what she did, she eventually conformed to what they were expecting of her.
There was another character interaction that I thought was also a striking element of the film and that’s between Mike and Malen. When Malen was being abrasive and all that at the beginning of the film, it would always be her and Mike together, then once she began her work as prayer girl she began to change her attitudes and that correlated with her seeing Mike less and less. I think correlation kind of shows a kind of metaphor for Malen’s two walks of life that she could have taken. Mike was her negative path and prayer and saintliness was her positive one. This was also mentioned in the film by Malen’s mother as she was praying for her daughter to return that night she ran away. She begged God to put her back on the “right path” and I’m pretty sure this metaphor is what she meant.
Mike himself as a character was another striking element. Earlier Mike was shown as being a metaphor for a bad path; analysis of Mike shows us why. Mike works as a car rental worker/taxi person but also tried to do a side service as a male escort. Furthermore, he also had a sick child that he was keeping secret from Malen and even shot a man in front of his son during a car accident/road rage incident. During the times Malen and Mike were together he kept the child, escort service, and the stolen phone he had given her a secret.
All these elements come together and make probably the most interesting element in the movie, the sex scene. It’s not exactly the sex itself that’s interesting but the different things that can be interpreted by it. Mike, during the scene, reveals this huge snake tattoo on his back and took that to be an allusion to the serpent that appeared in the Garden of Eden. Then after this sexual encounter Malen becomes very ill and starts having dreams about wandering a scorching hot desert with holes in her hands and feet that were bleeding. The church helps her get better and eventually she’s able to speak to one of the priests about what happened to her. He explained that the dream was a way of God telling her she was a saint. So the sex scene could have been interpreted as a saint being poisoned by the serpent, and that’s why Malen got sick.
After this Malen fully accepts her responsibility as a saint and has to choose between leaving to go with Mike or staying and of course she stays. This shows that she’s completely different from the Malen at the beginning of the film and reiterates choosing the right path. Mike too eventually changes his character but only after his child dies and he goes to jail.
This leads to the final scene which shows that both Malen and Mike have a kind of agreement to see each other when Mike’s sentence is over. The striking part of this final element of the movie was that it showed them both being on a better path in some way resulting in a happy ending.