La Mosca en la Ceniz - Review

The fly ash or La Mosca en la Ceniza by Gabriela David, is the story of two girls who reach Buenos Aires from a rural place, in search of a good job, but are deceived and forced to work in a brothel.

One of them refuses to work and struggles to escape, but the other adapts to her new life.

The film portrays the issue of human-trafficking and is indicative of the fact that how poor girls are hoaxed into such a business.

Most of the film is shot within the brothel, showing us the life inside these closed walls. The frames, lighting and sound within the brothel are suggestive of the closed space they are in. A feeling of suffocation accompanies and is well portrayed.

The rooms in which the girls gather, is highly decked, while the room they sleep in looks cold and closed, except a small closed glass window. This perhaps mirrors their life, decorated from the outside for customers, but lonely and dreadful in reality.

The frames emphasize the thought and reactions of a character through a lot of close up frames, and mid-shots. As if each character is important as a separate entity and everyone has small parallel stories that are visible even with the main story that is happening.

The film also depicts a huge contrast in the neighboring affluent houses and open spaces. Neighbors continue to deliberately pretend to ignore the hidden brothel.

The trick of the drowning fly in water and its revival when it’s dropped into a tiny heap of ash could be metaphorically similar to the drowning of the two girls and their revival as they succeed in getting out of the brothel. It’s like ‘resurrection’ when one of the girls manages to escape and brings the brothel to the notice of people thus saving all the other girls trapped inside.

I enjoyed the movie for the social issue it deals with.