LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO (MY BROTHER’S WOMAN)

LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO is a Mexican movie in Spanish about a woman, Zoe, who has an affair with her husband’s estranged younger brother, Gonzalo, an artist. Zoe’s husband, Ignacio, only reserves Saturday for making love with her. Consequently, Zoe feels their marriage lacks passion, excitement and surprise. Ignacio protests to her that he truly does love her, but the movie soon shows that, during a business trip, Ignacio had an unknown lover in his room.

As Zoe’s affair with Gonzalo heats up, so does the tension between Zoe and Ignacio. It is then revealed that Ignacio is actually seeing other men on the side. That revelation, and another twist in the story, drive Zoe and Gonzalo apart and bring her closer to Ignacio. Zoe finally agrees to keep their marriage, but let Ignacio continue to pursue his homosexual liaisons.

Though beautifully photographed with some good performances, LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO is boring and melodramatic at times. Worse, the movie has a very strong Romantic worldview that attacks and undermines traditional Latin American society’s (and the Bible’s) condemnation of homosexuality and its views on marriage.

In the beginning, this movie shows Zoe’s affair with Gonzalo as a positive thing, and her husband Ignacio as unreasonable. Then, however, as more facts about Gonzalo’s venal character are revealed, Ignacio becomes the sympathetic figure. Finally, the movie ends on a strong politically correct note as Zoe accepts and virtually endorses Ignacio having homosexual liaisons on the side when he agrees to help her raise the child she has conceived through Gonzalo, who wants her to get an abortion. In fact, during the movie, viewers learn that Gonzalo has always liked to accuse Ignacio of actually being a homosexual. The movie suggests that that’s because Gonzalo is a venal person who has anti-homosexual feelings. This doesn’t sit well with Zoe, who has a flamboyantly homosexual male friend with whom she likes to discuss her problems. Ultimately, therefore, LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO is just another abhorrent, politically correct homosexual fantasy from pseudo-intellectual, liberal elites working in the moviemaking industry.

Happily, like other movies with very strong homosexual content, this movie made very little money this year in North America. Despite having one of the widest releases ever here for a Latin American movie, LA MUJER didn’t even surpass last year’s average box office for movies with very strong homosexual content. In fact, movies in 2005 with no homosexual content averaged more than 30 times as much money as this movie earned in North America in 2006! Furthermore, movies with very strong Christian worldviews, like THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and CINDERELLA MAN, averaged nearly 65 times as much money in North America as LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO.