Despite the U.S. having a more powerful LGBT rights movement, a less religious population, and a center-left political party ruling the country for the majority of the past few decades, it is Mexico that decriminalized sodomy one hundred years before the U.S. did. Mexico also unanimously passed an anti-discrimination law in 2003, yet there still is no such law on U.S. books (though the U.S. Supreme Court did outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation last year). The Mexican Constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual preferences; the U.S. Constitution does not. Part of this (again, according to Beer and Acevez) is due to secularism playing a bigger role in national politics in Mexico, despite the higher popularity of religion (especially the Catholic Church).
That being said, the story of I Carry You With Me primarily takes place in 1994, a very different time than 2021 or even 2003. Many queer Mexicans had rights, but things could still be difficult. 1994 was before Patria Jiménez became the first openly gay member of the Mexican parliament in 1997, and it was more than a decade before Mexico City legalized same-sex civil unions. Despite how things have generally been better for a longer period of time for queer people in Mexico than in the U.S., this is also not to suggest that Iván and Gerardo's stories (the two main narratives we witness in this film) are not without trials. Some anecdotal accounts offer powerful reminders of real-life homophobia, like a blog from teenager Paulina Aldaba, who wrote about being told that homosexuality was how "Satan separated people from God," or how "homophobic slurs became a staple of everyone's vocabulary."
I Carry You With Me is one of two Mexican dramas that have made its way to the United States this year dealing with border crossings (the other being the significantly darker and more depressing Identifying Features). It starts in modern-day New York City. Iván (played here in as a middle-aged man by Gerardo Zabaleta) carries a lifetime of memories, achievements, and heartache. There has simultaneously been for him an enormous amount of guilt and alienation as a gay man who crossed over from Mexico into the United States, leaving behind his son to live with a mother who was repulsed by Iván's sexual orientation. Iván dreams of his younger self. Most of the film's scenes show younger Iván in Mexico, struggling to make money as a dishwasher while he's a qualified and talented chef, but also hiding his orientation in order to keep seeing his young son.
In these scenes (in which the character is played by Armando Espitia), he meets a teacher named Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), and there is immediate attraction. The two start flirting (telling stories like how Iván spent his younger years in the 80s masturbating to posters of Tom Cruise) and dating. Gerardo is more comfortable in his skin, while Iván is a "complicated boyfriend." How could Gerardo not be less closeted? His mother has been quite supportive of him, despite the undeniable cruelty of his brutal father, who left him alone in the remote part of their village at night as punishment for "acting like a girl." In this scene, the young actor Nery Arredondo provides a scene-stealing moment as a scared Gerardo non-verbally begging for mercy from his father. This is one aspect of their stories that are similar; when Iván was a boy (played by Yael Tadeo), he was discovered by his father in a dress and with makeup on, and his father, too, was disgusted, though he didn't resort to measures as extreme as Gerardo's did.
For the scenes in which Iván and Gerardo become intimately involved, there is a romantic and subtle yet dreamlike quality to the filmmaking. (Compare this to scenes in Identifying Features, which very much are nightmarish.) But for much of the film, the scenes delve into the tragic aspects of queer stories; this may make the film come across as a bit old-fashioned to many post-Call Me By Your Name audience members, as I Carry You With Me contains many expected tragic elements of queer storytelling: acts of random violence, cultural conservatism, closetedness, toxic masculinity, and familial rejection. I wouldn't blame some people for not wanting to watch the film due to the depressing nature of it.
I Carry You With Me juxtaposes this tragedy with tales of border crossings and other experiences of undocumented workers, adding on top of that moments of betrayal, desperate measures to survive, loneliness, lies, and questions about how authentic the American Dream actually is (and who gets a shot at it). Like Moonlight before it, I Carry You With Me contains the stories of two gay men in love told through three different periods of their lives. By the end of the film, one will clearly recognize the major elements of the film's success in terms of storytelling: the direction of Heidi Ewing (the documentarian who makes her narrative feature film debut here), the superb screenplay by Ewing and Alan Page Arriaga, and especially the acting. There is not a single flawed performance in this movie, especially those of Espitia and Vázquez.
The somber tone and heart-rendering moments may understandably not be for everyone, but for a chance to witness such exceptional acting, as well as a reminder of just how much progress has been made in such a relatively short amount of time, this film is one many should seek out.
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