UNA FAMILIA DE TANTAS

Rodrigo Cataño (Fernando Soler) runs his household like his own private kingdom, demanding obedience and respect from his submissive wife Doña Gracia (Eugenia Galindo) and their five children. This strictly maintained state of affairs is disturbed with the arrival of charming travelling salesman Roberto (David Silva), who convinces the initially resistant Rodrigo to purchase his newfangled household wares (first a vacuum cleaner, then a fridge) and enchants the family’s 15-year-old daughter Maru (Martha Roth). When Maru declares that she intends to marry Roberto, she defies not only her domineering father, but also the entire patriarchal order he represents. Long considered one of the key films of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Alejandro Galindo’s resonant family drama movingly depicts the tension between tradition and modernity that was gripping Mexican society at the time. (TIFF Director Alejandro Galindo is an attentive observer of social realities. A Family Like Many Others is not only the most popular and beloved family melodrama of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, it’s also an intelligent, subtle cinematic dialogue with the audience. Widely considered a masterpiece, the film reflects the morals of the urban middle class and questions the authoritarian logic of family structure. Galindo purposely displaces genre conventions, offering instead freedom of interpretation. Fernando Soler (Rodrigo Cataño) rules his household with draconian authority. The family’s conservative, middle-class life is shaken by a young salesman (David Silva) who attracts the attention of 15-year-old daughter Maru (Martha Roth). In addition to traditional melodramatic elements, the film also features themes of adolescence and finding one’s own independence. Maru’s rebellion is in open opposition to the entrenched patriarchal regime and a refusal to passively accept traditional gender roles.