J Paul Johnson
Ana María and Mercedes are two women living in Panama City whose lives are on the surface worlds apart. One is Colombian immigrant, a lower-class domestic worker in her 40s seeking employment and harboring a secret. The other, a native Panamanian, is an aging matriarch whose large and well-to-do family has little time for eldercare. Circumstances bring them together in the touching and atmospheric Querido Trópico (Beloved Tropic), making its world premiere this week in the Centrepiece section of the 49th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The result: a surprising and affecting exploration of female isolation and friendship, directed with a deft touch by documentarian Ana Endara and expertly acted by Jenny Navarrete and Paulina García.
In a narrative especially sensitive to the disparities of class and wealth, Ana María (Navarrete) is on the cusp of deportation and desperate for employment. To secure a job working as an in-home caregiver, she adopts a ruse, pretending to be pregnant, in hopes that her prospective employers will take greater pity on her, which they do. Her plan, though, is less well thought through than it is initiated, and the longer her tenure of employment, the greater the likelihood her ruse will fail. Ana Maria is otherwise attentive and competent, perhaps the perfect hire to attend to the needs of a busy family whose aging mother has become something of an impediment to their hectic household.
Mercedes (García) lives with her daughter and husband and their children in the well-appointed home where Ana Maria as hired. At first, the tasks assigned Ana Maria are simple: take the old lady out for her afternoon walk and supervise her whereabouts. But the family seems only dimly aware of—and scarcely concerned with—what is to Querido Trópico‘s audience and Ana Maria a slowly if demonstrably encroaching dementia. In her age, Mercedes—still a beautiful and sprightly woman with a fierce independent streak—finds her identity and past slowly eroding.
The relationship between caregiver and patient is thorny at first. Used to being bossed around by her daughter, Mercedes at first revels in the opportunity to do the same to poor Ana Maria, ordering her about to slog through chores in the rain and the like. Yet slowly—mesmerizingly slowly in this languidly-paced film—Ana Maria begins to see the complex woman Mercedes had once been, and Mercedes, meanwhile, learns Ana Maria’s secret, and more, and the two women begin a surprising and affecting friendship.
It is always a delight to see any film that takes aging seriously and thoughtfully as does Querido Trópico. Endara has her pulse on the concerns of a generation drifting slowly into eldercare and even dementia: we see García as Mercedes decline as her health deteriorates, no longer able to function fully on her own but still a woman worthy of attention and dignity. Also too, Navarette’s Ana Maria is saddled with a difficult task so many are so quick to abandon: caring for elders with love and attention rather than simply paying others to change bedsheets and feed by spoon.
Over time, Ana María and Mercedes’ relationship in Querido Trópico begins to resemble that of mother and daughter, even though Ana María’s pregnancy is a ruse and Mercedes’ own daughter has for the most part abandoned her role. Both Ana María and Mercedes are women whose isolation is imposed on them by circumstance: in Ana Maria’s, her tenuous immigrant and childless status, in Mercedes’, her age and dementia. Yet even these two unlikely friends can between them navigate their challenges and learn to care for each other where and when others do not.
Querido Trópico’s pace may be languid and stakes relatively small, but its insights are complex and profound. Like the accomplished documentarian she is, Endara directs with an eye attentive to the two protagonists’ tropical surroundings, especially the changing weather and the local flora and fauna, transitional shots of plants and animals (for instance, caged birds engaged in song) working as they wound in a verité documentary. Surprisingly humorous and consistently touching, Querido Trópico charts a friendship born of mutual isolation, framed by smart insights, gentle laughs, and a sweet, if elegiac, conclusion.
Querido Trópico (Beloved Tropic) premieres this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, followed by its European premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival September 20-28, 2024.
