La mule

A Cuban woman arrives at a French airport, she acts suspiciously and appears to be concealing something in her locked case. However a search of her bags and her body reveal something customs didn't expect.

This short looks like it's going to have a serious (or at least interesting) point to it. It sets itself out with a dictionary definition of a mule - ending with the one referring to people who smuggle drugs. However this film is not about drugs at all - we are led to believe this, right up until the end where we are fobbed off with something that looks like it's meant as a punchline - but is really unfunny and more stupid than anything else.

The lead actress is one of the ugliest women on the face of this earth - now if she could act that wouldn't matter, but her total lack of character means we spent half of the film following a drab woman round an airport.

Overall, this is pointless - it doesn't say a thing about drug smuggling and it's supposed punchline is flat and unfunny. It's rare that a short film can be described as a waste of time (after all it's only taking up 10 minutes), but this is so flat that I honestly want my time back from whoever made this. Oh and a written apology is probably in order - that's how pointless this thing was...

This is a little gem about prejudice. Not racial this time, but about nationalities that are not "well seen" in the First World or for that matter nowhere: this is the case of a woman from Colombia, who very happily arrives to Paris and is detained, undressed and humiliated by security guards, and her luggage rudely inspected. This is not gratuitous entertainment of fiction, as many persons know. It happened to me in one of the Paris airports, so I know, and if you are from Latin America as me and "the mule" the humiliation is double. But French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, who is able to describe dramatic stories as "Carlitos Medellín" (in Colombia) and "Johnny Mad Dog" (in Liberia), has a sense of humor. And one of Pedro Almodóvar's muses, Miss Rossy de Palma, wonderfully plays the Colombian woman who watches in awe, terror and sadness what is happening to her. But then… I cannot spoil the little story for you. See it.