Under the Same Moon

After two days of adding many much needed words to my WIP and getting closer to the ending, I plopped my fried brain and tired body onto the sofa and watched a new DVD, Under the Same Moon. I have had this in my Netflix queue ever since I first read about its release in theaters in Entertainment Weekly. And during the past month or two, there’s been a “making of” piece about this movie on one of the movie channels, although I don’t remember which one.

This movie is mostly in Spanish so I had to have the subtitles turned on (my high school Spanish is mostly gone from my brain). It tells the story of nine-year-old Carlitos whose mother, Rosario, left Mexico for the US four years earlier, wanting to work toward a better life. Since she is an illegal, it isn’t easy for her to earn the money to send home each month, let alone earn enough money to be able to bring him to the US. When Carlitos’ grandmother dies, he packs up and comes to America to find his mother. Not an easy task since he doesn’t have an address or phone for her, only a description of the Los Angeles corner where she has called him from the pay phone every Sunday for four years. His journey is not an easy one.

This movie is touching in so many ways. I especially liked the character Enrico (hope I’m remembering his name) who begins as such a selfish jerk but doesn’t end that way. And no matter how you feel about the political issue of illegal immigration, the emotional issue of reuniting a mother and son is worth watching.

I gasped once, and I teared up at the end — but they were happy tears.

-rlh-