I Carry You With Me: Gentle Mexican Immigrant Love Story Floats Between Fact And Drama
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A-
Reminiscences, dreams, and reflections swirl about in I Carry You With Me, a wistful first narrative feature by Heidi Ewing, until now known as a documentary filmmaker. Along with her directing partner, Rachel Grady, she’s best-known for the 2006 Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp.
Here she parts a curtain between documentary — a film that started as a portrait of gay New York chef and restauranteur Iván García and his partner, Gerardo Zabaleta — and a scripted drama about love and loss, with actors playing Iván and Gerardo in different time frames as young men and boys back in Mexico.
Though the subject of immigrants from persecuted minorities fleeing their homelands is topical, what elevates I Carry You With Me above most social dramas is its finespun, artisanal quality. That includes the soulful performances, cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramirez’s furtive, handheld glimpses of new love in twilight, editor Enat Sidi’s interwoven time frames, and the melancholic soundtrack from Jay Wadley.
At times, the impressionistic, time-shifting narrative can be confusing though the disorientation reflects the mentality of characters always longing to be elsewhere. We begin in the town of Puebla, about 100 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. Young Iván (Armando Espitia) has graduated from cooking school and aspires to be a chef, but he can’t land any kind of kitchen job.
One night, out at a nightclub with a woman friend, the shy Iván catches the eye of a handsome schoolteacher, Gerardo (Christian Vázquez). There’s an instant attraction but also complications. Iván, who is separated from his wife (Michelle González), has a five-year-old son, and if he was publicly outed as gay, he could lose his parental visiting rights. Gerardo, a wealthy rancher’s son, has more confidence, but keeps his sex life hidden from his disapproving family.
Iván, who is weary of putting his life on hold and keeping his life secret, decides to go to New York, even if it means illegally, in the hopes of landing a chef job. There’s the harrowing night journey in the back of a truck across the desert border, along with his woman friend, Sandra (Michelle Rodríguez) who almost doesn’t survive the trip.
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As an undocumented immigrant in New York, Iván is once again fearful of exposure. He suffers through menial jobs, making long-distance calls to Gerardo and his son, telling lies about his success in New York. Until one night, while making a food delivery into a hectic restaurant kitchen, Iván witnesses an angry chef fire a line cook and promptly offers himself as a substitute.
The spine of the narrative, co-written by Ewing and co-writer, Alan Page Arriaga, is a series of voiceover monologues by the contemporary Garcia as he travels through New York, in his head scarf and leather jacket, contemplating his overlapping identities: “Janitor, dishwasher, line cook, chef, owner. Father. Immigrant. Mexican.”
These reflective moments are intercut with scenes of the younger Iván in Puebla and New York, and then to flashbacks of both men in their misfit childhoods: Iván as a boy (Yael Tadeo) trying on a girl friend’s frilly yellow quinceañera dress, or the child Gerardo (Nere Arredondo) struck by his angry father for his shameful effeminacy.
Yet, to the end in the film’s final third, when they become successful in New York, these men are painfully tied to their families, friends, and unreachable homeland. The journey across social and physical boundaries had meant real material gains along with too many losses to count.
I Carry You With Me. Directed by Heidi Ewing. Written by Heidi Ewing and Alan Page Arriaga. Starring Iván García, Gerardo Zabaleta, Armando Espitia, Christian Vázquez, Michelle Rodríguez, Michelle González, Yael Tadeo and Nere Arredondo. Opens August 20 in Toronto (Canada Square) and in Vancouver (International Village), followed by more cities in the coming months.