OK, granted: The movie was filmed in the early or mid 80's I think, and you might even claim that the latino talent pool was not as big back then as it is now. But C"MON! The guys who were cast as the young Mexican homeless boys were HORRIBLE! Spanish is my first language and I could tell that the actors who portrayed JOhny and Robert were not fluent at all in Spanish which for this film it is a MAJOR point since they re supposed not to speak English. I guess that explains the reason why when Johny had dialogue, the camera was not on him, and the times when he spoke and the camera was on him there was no sync. I am 100 percent sure that they used someone else's voice ( a bad actor's at that) to do the voice over for Johny. For someone who speaks Spanish it was PAINFUL to listen to the monotone, emotion-deprived delivery of the lines. I don't know under what circumstances these two horrible actors were cast but I am sure the director did not do a thorough audition process to get the best actors. The actor who played Robert was better at ATTEMPTING to sound better in Spanish. I still don't know if he was fluent in Spanish, which it sounds like he was. And if he was then he was just saying the grammatically incorrect lines given to him by the director without complaining about not being correct. One of the examples is when he is being harassed by the white guy. Roberto says:" Para. No me molesto". Translated that means: " Stop. It doesn't bother me".or " Stop. I don't get bothered". Im sure the intention of the writer was: " Stop. Don't bother me" which should've been: "Para. No me molestes". The only character that spoke good Spanish was the guy who was telling the story of how they crossed the border. And I could bet the reason that being is because probably he really went thru that and he was just being interviewed ( he did not NEED to act)I doubt that was scripted. That part when he's talking, it totally threw me out of the movie, because it had a documentary feel to it and then to go back into the bad acting was like, disconnected. Among other things,it was torture when they had the Spanish speakers dialogue on the background. They kept on repeating the same dialogue over and over and over again! same lines over and over! I guess it would work for non-Spanish speakers, because they just hear a foreign language and they have no idea whats being said. But when you understand the language you get so frustrated that you wanna throw a shoe at the TV and make it shut up. I really like Gus Van Sant's directing but I have no idea, and im very curious to know what pressed or forced Mr Gus Van Sant to cast these horrible actors. Was it pressure from the producers, or did he honestly think these guys were the BEST?
Review of Mala Noche
