The Good Girls

A film set in Mexico City in 1982. Sofía belongs to a small circle of wealthy women. Tennis club, hairdresser, imported cars, a house with staff, and the correct summer holidays. Then the currency collapses. The peso is devalued, the banks are nationalised, and the money that made all of it possible stops. Her husband stops explaining. Cards are refused, deliveries are turned away, and the staff are let go one by one. From there the film is about keeping up appearances. The lunches continue, the invitations continue, and Sofía spends her remaining energy on making sure nobody in the circle finds out. A newer woman appears in the group. She has money and none of the right manners, and she is welcomed anyway, which tells Sofía exactly where the ground has moved. What the narrative is interested in is not the crisis but class: the film is about a woman whose entire self is made of position, and what is left when the position goes. The cruelty is all in the small talk. Nobody says anything direct and every scene is an evaluation. The period detail is exact and unshowy, and the camera stays close on faces at the moment a remark lands. Ilse Salas plays Sofía, with Cassandra Ciangherotti and Flavio Medina. Alejandra Márquez Abella directed and wrote. The source is a book by Guadalupe Loaeza about that milieu. Who it is for: anyone who likes precise, quiet social satire. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a sympathetic lead; the film does not ask you to like her and does not condemn her either.