Las abandonadas

Dolores Del Rio is absolutely stunning to watch in this melodrama of a suffering woman, directed by the great Emilio Fernandez and shot by the equally great Gabriel Figueroa. The plural in the title tells us that her story stands for the stories of others like her. At its best the film evokes the powerful portraits of victimised women in the work of Kenji Mizoguchi, though at one point one is reminded of the more contrived soap opera of Madame X, when her long lost son grows up to be a lawyer and she watches him in court, he later sees her in a crowd and gives her a coin, not knowing the poor woman is his mother. The episodic story is told efficiently and is well paced.