Al otro lado / On the Other Side (2005)

Direction and screenplay: Gustavo Loza. Cast: Adrian Alonso, Jorge Milo, Nuria Badih, Carmen Maura

Gustavo Loza’s Mexican drama Al otro lado / On the Other Side tells the interspersed stories of three children — one Mexican, one Cuban, one Moroccan — whose fathers have crossed to the other side. No, not the Great Beyond, but somewhere almost as mysterious and alien: the wealthy lands north of the Rio Grande and the Mediterranean Sea.

However well-intentioned, Loza’s handling of the three episodes is uneven, and the film would have worked better had it focused on a particular story, preferably the Moroccan tale. That section, which has a little girl traveling on her own from Morocco to Spain in search of her emigrant father, is the least sentimental and most well-rounded of the three. Unsurprisingly, it is also the most touching. Also in that section, Carmen Maura makes a brief but effective appearance as the boss of a teen-prostitution ring.

Although Loza’s sentimental approach failed to win me over, it may well be the right ingredient to get Al otro lado a best foreign-language film Academy Award nomination.

Reviewed at the AFI FEST 2005.