Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016)
Twenty five years after Miguel died from AIDS, his niece, filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo, embarks on an excavation into a quagmire of unresolved family drama. Like many gay men in the 1980s, Miguel moved from Puerto Rico to New York City; he found a career in theater and a rewarding relationship. Yet, on his deathbed he grappled to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholic upbringing. Now, decades after his death, Cecilia locates Miguel’s lover Robert, who has been shunned and demonized by the family, in order to understand the whole story.
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Undescribable Perfection
Excellent, a Must See
A Masterpiece!
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
Quietly powerful and intimate family documentary, as the film-maker tries to make sense of her uncle's too-short life twenty five years after his death from what was called cancer, but was actually AIDS. Coming from a religious catholic family, with an extremely strict and conservative matriarch, young Miguel left his home in Puerto Rico and moved to New York to become an actor. He developed a deep. loving relationship with a gay ex-priest, which soon morphed from being lovers to the deepest of non-sexual friendships, so Miguel would prowl the night and take on sexual partners in the days before anyone really understood what a potential death sentence that had become. With his illness he was pulled between his soul mate who wanted him to be himself, and his mother, who wanted him to repent his sinful life, so that he could get into heaven. Meanwhile, the rest of the family was to varying degrees at least more empathetic with Miguel's sexuality, but were afraid to anger his mother by questioning her.In exploring this history many years later film-maker Cecilia Aldarondo discovers family secrets, torn up hearts and souls, and her own desire to make sense of her family's unresolved pain. A film full of deep emotions, but not histrionics, it quietly looks at how we all try to be what those who love us want and often end up pulled impossibly in multiple directions because of it.