Noah Perez Assignment 2

The movie I decided to go with is a Mexican-American drama film Under the Same Moon ([Bajo] La Misma Luna). The story begins with a mother, Rosario, crossing the Rio Grande river to get to the other side. She is now working for two families to support her nine year old son Carlitos that still lives in Mexico with his grandmother. They haven’t seen each other in four years, but they talk every sunday on a payphone at 10 A.M. Carlitos’ aunt and uncle try to persuade the grandmother to take custody of Carlitos, but their only reason to do so is to take money from Carlitos’ mother that sends it over. One morning, the grandmother is found dead by Carlitos. She was very ill and died in her sleep. Carlitos, now wanting to find his mother, seeks help from two coyotes (immigrant transporters) that help smuggle children across the border.

Later at the border, the two coyotes get their car taken away due to unpaid parking tickets. The car is taken to a lot with Carlitos hidden in the seat. Carlitos finds a man that can take him across the border in exchange for money. Carlitos saved up money from his money, but unknowingly dropped it earlier on accident. When the man asked for the money and Carlitos didn’t have it, the man decided to take Carlitos and sell him to people that take kids and make them into slaves/sex slaves. A women fortunately knew what was going on with Carlitos being taken away and saved him by paying off the man and took Carlitos back to her house where she made food and offered him a place to stay. The next day, Carlitos worked for a plantation in order to stay with other undocumented immigrants. The plantation gets raided by immigration police. Carlitos and a man named Enrique, who doesn’t like Carlitos, manage to hide and escape. Enrique and Carlitos decide to join together and pursue the adventure. They decide to work for a couple in a restaurant for awhile, until Carlitos decides to seek his estranged father, Oscar, for help on finding his mother. He agrees but later changes his mind which angers Carlitos. Enrique, feeling bad for Carlitos, agrees to help him find his mother in California.

Enrique and Carlitos finally make it to LA, and pursue the same location of the telephone that Rosario calls Carlitos every Sunday at 10 A.M. With no luck they decide to take a break and continue the search the next day. They decide to sleep on a park bench since they had nowhere to go. When Enrique wakes up, he decides to go get breakfast for himself and Carlitos. While he’s gone, police stop and see Carlitos sleeping and wake him up asking what he was doing there. Carlitos was anxious, scared and didn’t know what to do since his English wasn’t fluent. Enrique comes back with food for the both and notices the police. He quickly thinks of an idea and decides to approach the cops and purposely throw his coffee at the cop to provoke them away from Carlitos. He yells to him to run away and Carlitos does so. Enrique is caught by police, but is relieved that Carlitos escaped.

Carlitos continues his search for his long lost mother. He finally finds the same payphone after many searches. He sees a women that he recognized and calls to her “Mama!”, Rosario turns around and see her little boy again and starts to cry with full of enjoyment to see her son after four years. They are both across from each other from the street. Traffic is still driving by so they must wait until the light turns on for them to cross. The camera now focuses to the street walking sign and it switches to the ‘walk’ sign between Rosario and Carlitos, ending the movie without showing their reunion, but tells the audience that Carlitos’ journey is over and is finally reunited with his mother.

The journey of a young boy who will go to great lengths to find his loving mother after years of separation.

5 words: Love, Journey, Drama, Obstacles, Struggle.