The Queen of the Night

The film starts from the life of the Mexican singer Lucha Reyes. Reyes was one of the first women to sing ranchera and made room for herself in a mariachi world where women had no place. Her voice deepened after a respiratory illness she caught on tour in Europe, and that voice decided her style. The work calls itself an imaginary biography and says so plainly in its credits. The account opens in 1939 and puts her relationship with her mother at the centre. Her loves, her marriage and the daughter she took in are inside the story. Reyes died in 1944. In Mexico the film drew hard criticism for treating a national figure irreverently. Patricia Reyes Spíndola and Alberto Estrella appear in Arturo Ripstein’s hundred and seventeen minute film, a coproduction of Mexico, France and the United States, completed in 1994.