Bella is the story of a failed-soccer-star-turned-chef befriending a recently-pregnant-and-now-fired-waitress over the course of a day. In the end, it is both a mildly successful little film and an interesting case study.
If you’d watch this movie knowing absolutely nothing about it, you’d finish it mostly pleased. The acting is good, the story is interesting, the cinematography is decent. It’s nothing overly enthralling or groundbreaking, but there are plenty of worse indie flicks out there, and this one succeeds in what it does.
But when you find out the backstory to the making of the film, there’s a lot more to think about and assess here. The lead actor was a wildly-successful soap opera star in Mexico who was building quite the resume, but after recommitting his life to Jesus Christ, wanted to pursue projects with more wholesome messages. The director intended to do the same. Both, as Latinos, also wanted to portray their culture outside the usual stereotypical ruthless bandits, lazy mooches, or steamy lovers.
So, were they successful?
I appreciate the portrayal of Latin culture in the US. They’re right, we could use more of it, especially because all of us could definitely learn from their zeal, joy, and tight-knit family that is shown in Bella.
I also appreciate that they set out to tell a real story with real people full of accidents and pain and hurt and mistakes. When Christians set out to make a story, this isn’t always a priority in their minds. Or, if it is, they’ll conveniently have a perfect and steadfast Christian character (played by Kirk Cameron, of course) come to share the gospel and save the day.
While I don’t think that Christians need to avoid things like curse-words in order to make a redemptive movie, I was impressed that such a real, honest, and poignant story could be told without a single curse-word or any other graphic material.
In the end, something about the film falls a little bit flat, a little bit hollow, a little bit empty. Mainstream critics complain that it was too concerned with its pro-life message and trying to disguise it. The reviewer at Christianity Today says, “The characters harbor no ambiguities; when the credits roll, we can feel sure that we’ve learned all there is to know about them.” In the end, I think this is true. It’s a fine film, but something is missing, and I would venture to guess that it’s because the writer/director was focused on something other than simply telling a story.
Sure, he wanted to tell a story, and again, he did a relatively decent job at it. But he wanted to tell a story that was not graphic, that was family-friendly, that was moral, positive, and life-affirming, and that showed Latinos in a good light. Perhaps that’s putting one too many restrictions on the story you’re telling, and that’s what will leave your story hollow.
So, as a case study, is this how Christians should be making movies? It’s definitely an interesting approach, and it’s not a bad attempt, not at all. This movie-making team shows great potential. If they could take one step back, resist telling the story they want to tell, and instead let a story tell itself and let the meaning unfold from there, I think they’d see much better success. Bella was very close to doing this, and that’s why it was a good film, but I think in the end there were too many restrictions placed on it.
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