Word: carla
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...Carla under the jacaranda tree in 'La Perdida...
...long second act begins as Carla involves herself more deeply with the native Mexico City residents she meets through Memo, a would-be revolutionary who sells Marxist pamphlets at the local market. Memo's relentless denigration of Carla's first-world background tugs on a string of middle-class guilt and self-loathing tied around Carla's soul. Yearning for the "authentic" Mexican experience, Carla eventually ends up in a flat she shares with her new Mexican boyfriend Oscar, who dreams of becoming a DJ in America, but settles for selling pot and T-shirts to tourists. Eventually his underworld...
...until this not-entirely convincing last act, Abel's focus on relationships and Carla's changing sense of self makes La Perdida one of the strongest and most challenging works of character study in the medium. Why challenging? Because Abel makes a gutsy move of creating characters that you can't automatically like, and to whom you never warm up in the course of the story. Even Carla, the most sympathetic of the cast, seems na?ve at best and stupidly unaware at worst. She keeps company with a spoiled snob, an arrogant blowhard and a fantasy-filled...
...Carla and Memo arguing in a typical scene...
Abel writes like a dramaturge, developing character and conflict mostly through articulate dialogue that ping-pongs between her smart, if oftentimes deluded or flawed characters. This makes La Perdida as engaging as good theater. A typical scene pits Memo against Carla in a long argument about the purity of Carla's motives for staying in Mexico. It lasts for over five pages with Memo saying things like "You teach over-priced English classes to under-educated Mexican morons who buy into the imperialistic American model?" To which Carla wonders about Memo's real reasons for learning English. "It wouldn...