Beloved Tropic

Ana Maria is an immigrant from Cali, Colombia.

She has been working with the elderly for 16 years, has been living in Panama for three years, and is still trying to obtain her documents.

She is three months pregnant and goes for check-ups, chatting with the other expectant mothers in the waiting room. She talks with them, wanting to know and understand their situations; she takes a number, but then leaves.

One day, she is called for an interview: she is to take care of a wealthy upper-class woman who is beginning to experience significant symptoms of senile dementia.

The daughter, Jimena, offers her 140 euros a week for working 8 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. As she informs her mother that this woman will be taking care of her, Mrs. Mercedes, called Mechi, doesn’t even turn to look or greet her; she is too busy tending to her orchids and her beautiful tropical garden.

A housekeeper who has worked and lived there for 40 years shows Ana Maria around and explains how to manage things.

The lady spends her afternoons drinking tea with her friends, but one day she starts gorging on sweets, losing control of herself. However, she does not want Ana Maria to watch or control her.

The city is hot, very humid, and it rains frequently. One day, she demands that Ana Maria open the rainwater collection system for her orchids, and the new caregiver doesn't hesitate to oblige her, even though it’s pouring rain.

She always rings the bell to call her and calls her daughter in front of her, asking her what the name of the pregnant girl who comes by sometimes is.

She often complains that things are being stolen from her, including her earrings.

Amid initial cruelty and distrust, one day Ana Maria falls while trying to reach a box, and they begin to laugh together.

Jimena realizes that her mother needs someone with her 24 hours a day, so she offers Ana Maria double pay to stay and sleep in the luxurious house.

It’s a small room on the ground floor, but in one of her rare lucid moments, Mrs. Mechi tells her she should move upstairs, where it's cooler and the room is much larger with a beautiful walk-in closet.

An intimate and entertaining relationship begins: showers, walks in the park, Ana Maria’s dedicated and patient care completely win over the lady, who eagerly requests her presence even on her birthday, when the entire family is there—her four children and all her grandchildren.

She wants Ana Maria to wear one of her beautiful lilac dresses and requests a photo with her.

Despite her confused state, the lady has moments of intuition, where she perceives things hidden from others: this leads to the sharing of a secret, which in turn opens up others.

She smokes in secret, eats voraciously, sometimes even insects, and drinks anything she finds lying around, while Ana Maria doesn't forbid her from doing anything, instead caressing her, indulging her, protecting her, and helping her understand what not to do.

The scene of her at night in front of the refrigerator is a true gem of caregiving pedagogy.

One day, while they are talking about Mercedes’ life, her four children, and her role as the manager of her own business, she reveals:

“Being a mother doesn’t save you from anything.”

Given Mechi's condition, which is very naive and spontaneous, it seems like a statement from her subconscious.

Amid the embarrassment of her children, the attention and linguistic rituals of Ana Maria, the lady lives out her days until an undisturbed and serene conclusion.

The magnificent tropical garden, the plants, the flowers, the parrots—they all accompanied her to a dignified, untroubled farewell.

The look Mrs. Mechi gives her caregiver is very different from the confused gaze that follows her through her mostly unaware daily life: the lively and intuitive portrait piques the viewer’s interest, always awaiting some prank, unpredictable act, cruel or welcoming word the lady might reserve for the people around her.

Endara’s storytelling is overwhelming: the ability to focus on events, secrets, the unspoken, reactions, behaviors, experiences, memories, confers significant anthropological value to the film, enriched by cultural, linguistic, social, economic, geographical, and ethnological elements that only a skilled and attentive documentarian could portray with such refined sophistication.

Two solitudes meet, between madness, absurdity, love, and care.

Two realities, vastly different and yet complementary, intersect in this brief phase of their lives: one seemingly having had everything, the other nothing.

One destiny: the urgency of an incomprehensible encounter that becomes vital—a necessity that forges a complementary bond.

It is a portrait of the many ways caregiving and motherhood can manifest for that part of humanity which may remain and return to being a child.

The incommunicable bewilderment of their respective conditions, between the isolation of illness and the desire that remains a dream, a game, an unfulfillment.