Sundance Review: Eva Longoria Bastón’s ‘La Guerra Civil’
21.01.2022 - 06:23
/ deadline.com
What happens when you fight your hero? That’s just one of the questions addressed by La Guerra Civil, an engaging Sundance Film Festival documentary premiere from Eva Longoria Bastón. The debut director also produces this lively account of the rivalry between boxers Oscar De La Hoya and Julio César Chávez in the 1990s. The men are interviewed separately, reflecting on their lives and their fights, while a series of talking heads offers insight into another key focus: cultural identity.
When Chavez and De La Hoya went head-to-head in the “Ultimate Glory” bout of 1996, Chávez was a Mexican national hero nearly 100 fights in; while De La Hoya was a young Mexican-American pretender to the throne. Both strongly identified as Mexican, but De La Hoya was considered an outsider to many, especially when he was taking on their untouchable icon.
The younger boxer talks frankly about his conflicting emotions, adding amusing recollections of a press tour, when he would leave the hotel at 4am for a run and see Chávez coming in from a night out. Well-chosen commentators remark on the boxers’ respective fanbases, different but united in a pride for their communities. It feels important that the majority of the interviews are in Spanish, when presumably many of them could have been in English, suggesting that the filmmakers share the cultural pride of their subjects.
Born in Texas to Mexican-American parents, director Longoria Bastón allows her voice to be heard briefly in the later part of the film, gently interviewing her subjects. It’s a subtle way of underlining her commitment, and one can imagine how a female interviewer might encourage a particularly intimate style of conversation.
An early section of the film goes into both boxers’
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