In Huesera (2022) we meet Valeria, a woman who has always wanted to be a mother. But when she finally falls pregnant, rather than feeling happy, she feels that something is off. As she progresses through her pregnancy, these feelings intensify and she is haunted by sinister visions and threatened by increasingly dangerous occult forces.
The complex intertwining of folklore, traditional belief and Christianity is stunningly evoked in this film. This is never more apparent than when Valeria, her mother and her aunt take a pilgrimage to an enormous statue of the Virgin Mary. We see these three women dominated and overshadowed by the ultimate mother, Mary, full of grace and benevolence. This thread of faith winds its way throughout the film, with Valeria relying first on the church and then on the older rituals of her community to exorcise the spectre haunting her.
The notion of faith is central throughout, from Valeria and her husband’s faith in their ability to conceive to her faltering faith in her ability to safely carry her baby to term. As Valeria’s fear grows, and as she feels increasingly hunted, and haunted, by a force she cannot understand, we see how faith can slip and take another shape. For Valeria this faith shifts towards the old ways, the traditional ways, to the brujas and their skills in saving souls. For her husband, this shifts towards faith in the deeply misogynistic medical profession, one that now sees Valeria as just the vessel, the placeholder for a life that matters more than her own. It is frightening and sad to see how little women matter, especially when pregnant.
See this film as quickly as you can, and keep an eye out for director Michelle Garza Cervera who is sure to go on to do amazing things.
This often poignant exploration and excavation of motherhood is the central theme of the film. We see in Valeria all the sacrifices women have to make to bear children. She’s a practical, hard-working, self-supporting craftsperson and yet she needs to give up everything that makes her individual, her work, her space, to make room for the baby. This loss of self is painful, for both Valeria and the viewer and as we watch her workshop getting broken down, we see an apt metaphor for the breakdown of her personhood, now she’s a mother first, and a person last.
Huesera is also an excellent example of body horror. We see the strain Valeria is under and hear it in every pop of her clenched knuckles. We see how she tolerates the strain she feels around her family through the clicking of joints and how the spectre haunting her is growing increasingly mangled, bones shifting and writhing as it pursues her. What is clear is that Valeria is trapped. Caught between who she was and who the world thinks she should be, she can’t go back, and can’t go forward, she has lost control of her life because she’s given it away. In her choices, we see how conformity will not protect you, how doing what you think you should, rather than what you want to do, is only a rocky road to resentment and disappointment. Hell is other people’s expectations and Valeria has walked willingly into it.
Huesera is one of the best representations of motherhood committed to film. It takes a loving slice of folklore and mixes it with body horror and creeping dread to create a visceral, bone-crunching, haunting exploration of the cost of our choices, and how we choose to pay the price. See this film as quickly as you can, and keep an eye out for director Michelle Garza Cervera who is sure to go on to do amazing things.
Huesera: the Bone Woman is out now on Shudder
