@kimonA marriage that lifts a man into the president's orbit, and a private life that could sink him. That's the knot at the middle of Dance of the 41, the 2020 Mexican period drama also known as El baile de los 41 🍿 Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, played by Alfonso Herrera, weds Amada Díaz, and Mabel Cadena gives her real weight as the daughter of President Porfirio Díaz. The match does exactly what it's supposed to for his standing among the elite. Away from all that, though, he runs with a set of men who hold intimate parties out of sight. Emiliano Zurita's Evaristo Rivas is the young lawyer who upends the arrangement. Once Ignacio falls for him, the marriage, the ambitions, the whole comfortable position all start to wobble. Herrera plays a guy split between the respectable face and the wanting underneath, and the performance carries it. Then the history lands. Police raided a private gathering on November 17, 1901, arresting roughly 41 men, some reportedly in women's clothing. Talk of a 42nd figure cropped up too, said to be the president's son-in-law, scrubbed from the official record. The whole thing took the name the Dance of the Forty One and stamped itself on Mexican culture and on LGBTQ+ representation since. What the film does with forbidden desire and social hypocrisy is the part that stuck with me, plus the question of what being gay cost in a society built on conformity. Political tension hums under the lavish costumes and close quarters the whole way through 👀

@kimonA marriage that lifts a man into the president's orbit, and a private life that could sink him. That's the knot at the middle of Dance of the 41, the 2020 Mexican period drama also known as El baile de los 41 🍿 Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, played by Alfonso Herrera, weds Amada Díaz, and Mabel Cadena gives her real weight as the daughter of President Porfirio Díaz. The match does exactly what it's supposed to for his standing among the elite. Away from all that, though, he runs with a set of men who hold intimate parties out of sight. Emiliano Zurita's Evaristo Rivas is the young lawyer who upends the arrangement. Once Ignacio falls for him, the marriage, the ambitions, the whole comfortable position all start to wobble. Herrera plays a guy split between the respectable face and the wanting underneath, and the performance carries it. Then the history lands. Police raided a private gathering on November 17, 1901, arresting roughly 41 men, some reportedly in women's clothing. Talk of a 42nd figure cropped up too, said to be the president's son-in-law, scrubbed from the official record. The whole thing took the name the Dance of the Forty One and stamped itself on Mexican culture and on LGBTQ+ representation since. What the film does with forbidden desire and social hypocrisy is the part that stuck with me, plus the question of what being gay cost in a society built on conformity. Political tension hums under the lavish costumes and close quarters the whole way through 👀