Doña Herlinda and Her Son

Rodolfo, a doctor in Guadalajara, is involved with Ramón, a younger music student. When his mother, Doña Herlinda, presses him to marry, Rodolfo proposes to the open-minded Olga. Doña Herlinda then finds the arrangement that will make everyone happy: she takes Ramón into the house as well, so that her son’s lover and his wife live under the same roof. Jaime Humberto Hermosillo wrote the film from the story of the same name by Jorge López Páez. It counts as important within Mexican cinema because it presents homosexuality as an ordinary matter rather than tying it to tragedy or punishment, which in 1985 was a real break. Doña Herlinda is played by Guadalupe del Toro, the mother of the director Guillermo del Toro. The record’s summary calls the mother manipulative, where the film’s tone is built on showing what she does rather than judging her.