I am honestly not sure how to classify I Carry You WIth Me. At first glance, a part of me might just dub it some kind of Mexican version of Brokeback Mountain only with a much happier ending, but that’s not really all that accurate. I knew it was based on a true story, and then not only did I learn that some of the “actors” in the movie weren’t really actors and the director, Heidi Ewing, originally did a number of documentaries, so were the portions of the movie with the real inspirations for the movie making a documentary and the rest was just a fictionalized account of their lives up to that point? I did some very cursory glances around the web (meaning about five minutes of Google searching) and couldn’t really find a definitive answer. Most of the movie uses actors, so that should be at least dramatized reality. I think.
Regardless, I was glad to see this Spanish language movie, whatever it is.
I Carry You With Me is the story of Ivan (Armando Espitia when in his 20s) and Geraldo (Christian Vázquez when in his 20s). Ivan, who gets more screentime and acts as a narrator, currently owns a restaurant and acts as head chef in New York City. He’s originally from Mexico, and the movie recounts how he met Geraldo at a gay bar. Both men are in varying degrees closeted. Ivan has a young son who he suspects he will never see again if his ex learns he’s gay. Geraldo comes from a wealthy family where his father has very, let’s say, traditional ideas on masculinity. Ivan has a degree from a culinary institute, but he can’t get past the role of dishwasher. Finally having enough of his life in Mexico, he and his childhood friend Sandra–the only person who seems to be aware of Ivan’s sexual orientation in the beginning of the movie–cross over to the United States, intending to stay a year, but he ends up staying there much longer, and eventually Geraldo follows him there. Once the two reconnect, well, they’ve been together ever since and Ivan’s culinary skills eventually pay off.
That, more or less, is what happens here. Ivan and Geraldo are still together today, but they cannot return to Mexico if they want to likewise return to the United States, hence the title referring (possibly) to Ivan’s son Ricky, a boy he hasn’t seen since the lad was about six, but here it is 20 years later, and Ivan would really like to go back to see his family on one hand, but he has far too much to lose if he does. There’s really no route for him, so he needs to decide if he wants to stay with Geraldo in the United States and run his restaurant or return to Mexico and see his son and mother, but then be barred from returning to the States.
There’s a lot to love about this movie. Ivan and Geraldo’s story is a sweet one. True, we see a lot more of Ivan than Geraldo, enough so that I wasn’t sure what was going on once or twice in the handful of instances where the narrative focus changed to Geraldo. Both men have a harrowing trip across the border, with Ivan traveling with the overweight Sandra through a hostile desert while Geraldo jumps a fence over a bridge and runs like hell. If anything, there is a sense that Ivan in his youth had a habit of lying to people to hide how bad off he was, starting with most of his loved ones over his sexual orientation and later to Geraldo over how well he is doing before Geraldo follows his love to New York.
The title, it should be worth noting, doesn’t really refer to a person per se, but to say what it does refer to edges too close to spoiler territory. I can’t say this is the sort of movie that really has a lot of such things–while the real Ivan and Geraldo are not exactly hugely well-known men, they are still public figures–but it is a look into the life and romance of two men looking for a place to fit in, and arguably, they have a lot of that with each other, but their existence isn’t without its own problems.
Grade: A-
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