Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #7. The Devil Between the Legs (El diablo entre las piernas) – Arturo Ripstein

The Devil Between the Legs (El diablo entre las piernas)

Mexican auteur Arturo Ripstein breaks a three year hiatus with his twenty-ninth feature, The Devil Between the Legs (El diablo entre las piernas), which began lensing in Mexico City mid-November 2018. The film’s producer Monica Lozano (Amores Perros) describes the film as “the most personal film that filmmaker Arturo Ripstein has ever made.” Reuniting with Silvia Pasquel, who starred in 2015’s Bleak Street, and Alejandro Suarez (who was also in Bleak Street and Ripstein’s 2011 The Reasons of the Heart), their latest is another intimate black and white feature scheduled to be shot across three locations. Arturo Ripstein, whose career began back in 1966 with Time to Die, has thrice competed in Cannes (The Holy Inquisition, 1974; Queen of the Night, 1994; No One Write to the Colonel, 1999) and also premiered in Un Certain Regard with 1998’s The Gospel of Wonders. Ripstein’s signature title, 1996’s Deep Crimson competed at Venice, while 2002’s The Virgin of Lust and 2015’s Bleak Street premiered at the festival out of competition.

Gist: Written by Ripstein’s wife and regular collaborator Paz Alicia Garciadiego (who began working on Ripstein’s films back in 1986 with The Empire of Fortune), the film concerns a senile couple showing how old age looks “like the future we do not want to reach us.”

Release Date/Prediction: With production underway in 2018, we could expect Ripstein to make the deadline for Cannes, which would be his first time on the Croisette in two decades (of note, he had a previous 20 year absence between 1974 and 1994). Considering his more recent works have tended to premiere out of Venice, we could also expect this to show up there. However, the best bet might be Locarno. He’ll be in Toronto in the month of March to present: Woman of the Port with Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garciadiego.