Most Beautiful Island

Most Beautiful Island was extremely well-received at Austin's SXSW Film Festival where it won Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature. This eloquent film explores the experiences of Luciana, a recent undocumented immigrant, who has recently arrived from her home land and is just trying to get by in New York. The film focuses on a single day as she takes various odd jobs and then gets invited to work at a mysterious party where she will be extremely well-paid for a single night's work. The suspense builds towards a truly shocking and deeply disturbing climax. This film shows the truly dark side of the American Dream and the truly disturbing nature of class privilege in a society with huge gaps in class and, therefore, power and privilege.

The story is described as inspired by true events so there may be some exaggeration in the actual climax, but it is still quite powerful and leaves the audience awestruck. Ana Asensio directed, wrote and stars in this fascinating and absorbing film. It is beautiful written, filmed and acted. The tension builds towards the disturbing climax. The American Dream is not always what it seems to be and needs to be re-imagined for our current economic and political realities. I hope the film gets distributed so more people can learn to empathize with the immigrant experience which has sadly become a political punching bag in recent years.

Although I am a huge fan of thriller movies and I keep myself very open minded to every type of film I decide to watch, this film, I have to say lacked a few essential components that I believe are very important when creating a movie. Personally, I do like this film and the only detail that I really care to write about and that really took away the most "points" from my rating was definitely the ending. If you've already seen the movie then you know exactly what I m referring to. There was so much buildup throughout the movie and when everything finally started to pickup or connect, there was a huge drop...as if it were meant for the audience to be left at the edge of our seats. If that's what they were going for or what was meant to happen, then I personally don't care for that type of conclusion; although it's pretty difficult to call it a conclusion at all. Also, if it were meant to leave us drawing the conclusion that a sequel were to follow, there just wasn't enough detail to insist that either. So, all in all, I liked it...but because a very smooth and well thought out ending is very important to me, personally, I had to take away quite a bit from what I rated this movie.

This is a low budget film that draws you in so you don't really notice. Not to spoil anything, but the camera work and the locations really bring out the emotions that the lead is feeling.

An undocumented immigrant in Manhattan attempts to make some quick cash when her friend invites her to get paid to beautify a party.

Drawn out as it follows her throughout the day, her multiple jobs, her landlord's threats, and one ice cream shopping trip not to be forgotten we spend more time getting her to the party than there. The anxiety builds throughout, because isn't just about the party so much as the circumstances that make the desperate decisions made there by all the women involved completely understandable.

The intimacy of the view of this woman's life is the best part of the film. People going for a straight horror/thriller film (as this was labeled when I watched it) are probably going to be a bit put off, but there is certainly the more mundane type of horror in abundance.

Can't say I loved the film (the ending feels a bit out of place and hokey in comparison to the lead-up), but given that this is Ana Asensio's first writer and director credits I have to say I am deeply impressed. This is a director that I'm going to keep an eye out for in the future.

This movie is not quite what you expect and this is it's charm. I like this movie because it shows essentially how the rich exploit the poor, and although not an original idea, it takes on a new spin, and thus is not quite what you think. The heroine of the movie seems to draw you into her world, her problems and yet despite everything, she emerges not as a victim, but as someone in control, with a heart, and someone with great strength. The immigrant seeking a better life emerges as someone more beautiful and stronger than the spurious "American Dream" , and she removes the facade from the rich and powerful for weak and pitiful embodiments that they really are.