"Huesera" - Film Review
Huesera gets its name from a Mexican folktale about a woman who collects bones in the desert. Huesera is a Spanish word that means a place that is destined to collect human bones that are removed from their graves. It’s from this framework that Huesera builds its premise. Valeria (Natalia Solián) and her husband (Alfonso Dosal) are newly expecting. What should be a happy turn of events for the couple morphs into something deeply sinister as Valeria starts to experience otherworldly visions. These apparitions are only visible to Valeria, and become progressively worse as her pregnancy nears full term.
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For a film that’s subtitled “The Bone Woman,” it shouldn’t be surprising that so much of the sound design relies on the cracking of bones. It’s something Valeria does to counter the stress of her upcoming pregnancy, but the sound design team uses the crunching sounds throughout the film. It’s one of the first things the audience hears even before they see an image on the screen. Huesera taps into the inherent body horror of pregnancy; the way it stretches and rearranges itself to make space for the baby to grow. It’s unpleasant and violent, but packaged by society as a beautiful, magical experience.
Much of Valeria’s life can be summed up by her attempts at meeting expectations. Whether those are expectations from herself, her family, or society, it makes no difference. They’re a massive weight on her shoulders, a guiding force in her life. The constant bone crunching and cracking the audience hears is the weight of those expectations pressing down on her. Proof a body cannot handle the immense pressures society has created.
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Huesera and the idea of motherhood always come back around to worth. “All the pain was worth it,” they say. It’s a means of writing off genuine concern or disinterest in motherhood. Everything will make sense when you have a kid, or so they say. Valeria is hiding an entire aspect of her life because that doesn’t fit the definition of who her family wants her to be. All of a sudden, her life and her choices are sidelined in favor of this child she’s not even sure she wants.
By no means is Huesera the first horror film about pregnancy and motherhood, but its take on the themes feels timely. Huesera is The Lost Daughter’s spooky sister and Rosemary’s Baby’s modern daughter. Motherhood, in Huesera, is a supernatural curse on Valeria. She’s bound by the parameters of this societal curse and she’s not alone. Huesera is stifling, angry, and a plea for change on a large scale.
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