I almost saw Most Beautiful Island in the theaters, but there were not a lot of available showtimes. Ana Asensio stars and directs this eighty-minute drama about Luciana, an undocumented immigrant, desperate to get enough money to survive so her friend, Olga, offers her a shady job. The title refers to Manhattan. The film is part slice of life, part redemption story.
Luciana is kind of an awful person. A more understanding person would conclude that she is a desperate person, but I was poor and homeless, and I have known undocumented people. She is mean. She leaves a wake of chaos wherever she goes and usually intentionally hurts people to get what she wants. She struck me as a typical female sociopath. Only the worst people surround her. The whole movie has an air of mystery: her reason for leaving Spain, her job, etc. When Olga casually references vampires, I perked up because I thought Olga was weird, and her teeth were a bit pointy, but alas, no such luck. Olga did nothing to hide her disdain of Luciana, and her value system contains zero milk of mercy.
After awhile, Most Beautiful Island’s atmosphere gets tiresome, and you want to get to the good stuff, which sadly makes me more complicit with the guests at Luciana’s job. It takes 36 to 58 minutes to explicitly find out what is happening.
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Rich people pay undocumented immigrants to go through a lethal private episode of Fear Factor. Earlier in the film, a bunch of roaches spilled into a bathtub while she was in it, and she just chilled with them instead of leaping out of the bathtub cursing and rejoicing because rent may not be an issue any longer. So I immediately thought, “You’ve got this, girl! Get money,” which she unsurprisingly did, but she does her good deed for the day by rescuing Olga who is freaking out and is not as jaded as she appears to be. Luciana takes her place in the challenge and impresses the hostess, who looks like Catherine Zeta Jones. It was anti-climatic in terms of torture porn, and I do not like torture porn.
On a more serious note, the viewer is supposed to be horrified at the dehumanization, exploitation and enslavement of a group of vulnerable, undocumented women immigrants for wealthy, sadistic people’s entertainment. Luciana feels a kinship to these insects who are relegated to the edges of society and exploited for others’ amusement instead of fearing them or viewing them with disgust. I was honestly surprised that she was capable of empathy, especially considering how Olga intentionally endangered her. I think her act of mercy is the most powerful moment of the film, but I’m not sure that the journey is worth that moment.
Usually I’m a fan of societal horror to tease out the subconscious fears surrounding a topic, but the whole set up of Most Beautiful Island cheapens the actual horror of the daily life of an undocumented immigrant. I watched Dolores, and the catalog of abuse inflicted upon migrant workers such as knowingly spraying pesticides on people who are working for you then complaining that they are not happy about it freak me out more. I appreciate the effort, but it is more hype than substance, and the actual bad acts depicted in this film were regularly aired on NBC and CBS for reality tv except we had Americans eager to participate. Sorry, real life is always more horrific.