Romantico	by M. Faust

Putting a face to the issue of illegal immigration that has attracted so much superficial attention in the last year wasn’t what filmmaker Mark Becker had in mind while making Romantico. But then, the final film isn’t what he had planned to make at all. His original goal was a short film about the bachelor culture of Mexican men who worked as mariachi musicians in the Mission Hill district of San Francisco, performing for the patrons of whatever bars and restaurants would let them in the door for tips. It wasn’t until Becker met Carmelo Muniz Sanchez, a 57-year-old musician, that he decided to focus his film on one man. And when Carmelo decided a week after shooting began to return to his hometown of Salvatierra, 1,000 miles south of the US Border, Becker saw the opportunity for a different kind of documentary, one that depicted the struggles of an illegal immigrant in reverse. Carmelo came to the US in the first place to try to earn a decent living for his wife, two teenaged daughters and ailing mother. It is the latter’s worsening condition that sparks Carmelo to make the return trip, though the chance to visit the family he hasn’t seen in three years is just as compelling. Once home, however, he realizes anew all the factors that made him leave in the first place as he struggles to get whatever low paying jobs he can find. Becker filmed Carmelo, a sad-eyed man with a philosophical bent, over a period of three years, though the story has an immediacy as if it takes place in a matter of months. Because he shot on film rather than video, Becker was forced to consider all of his shots carefully, and the result is a work which, while it may lack the plucked-from-real-life nature of many recent documentaries, has a gravity and depth many of those works lack. Becker chose film because he wanted to emulate the look and spirit of such classic 1960s documentaries as D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and the Maysles Brothers’ Salesman. Romantico may not rank at that level of achievement, but neither is the comparison wholly inapt for this moving portrait.

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