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BREAD AND ROSES Send This Review to a Friend
Socially conscious as always, British director Ken Loach has made his first film in the United States by venturing to Los Angeles and creating a stirring, passionate and profoundly moving drama about Mexican immigrants working as office cleaners and trying to better their lives. "Bread and Roses" takes its place among the outstanding films about organizing labor to strike for decent wages and working conditions. It is agit-prop in the most honorable tradition, but the film doesn't merely deliver a message, as potent as that message is. "Bread and Roses" tells a deeply human story in which we get to know the key characters, understand what they're up against and root for them. Loach, with a screenplay by Paul Laverty grounded in real struggles by janitors who have won much-publicized victories in Los Angeles, has turned a contemporary problem into entertaining, exciting drama while illuminating the specific issues involved.
Pro-labor films are hardly a staple of filmmaking in America, but there are those that have earned a place in our film history. For example, John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) stands as a monumental expose of the exploitation of migrant farm workers in the Great Depression. In the McCarthy era Herbert Biberman, blacklisted filmmaker and one of the imprisoned Hollywood Ten directed "Salt of the Earth" (1954), which dramatized a real strike by New Mexico miners and was released despite efforts to stop its distribution. In retrospect, that film also stands out for striking an early blow for women's rights, as the women help gain the ultimate victory and simultaneously fight for their rights within their own union and against being relegated by their husbands to mere domesticity. "Norma Rae" (1979), directed by Martin Ritt, powerfully dramatized the organization of textile workers in the South.
The opening of "Bread and Roses" bristles with tension as the film follows a group of Mexicans desperately making it across the border and being transported to Los Angeles by callous, money-grubbing operators. The focus is soon on Maya (Pilar Padilla), who isn't turned over to her family because all of the required money is not there. She is kidnapped by two of the smugglers and one of the men takes her to a hotel to force her to have sex. How she escapes immediately establishes Maya, winningly portrayed by Padilla, as a gutsy, appealing young women, which sets the stage for her role as a union stalwart after her sister Rosa gets her a job as a janitor in the huge office building where Rosa works to support her ill husband and her children.
George Lopez, known primarily as a comedian, is excellent in his demanding acting role as Perez, the menacing boss who is a flunky for management of the cleaning contracting company that exploits the employees in a pattern of low wages, no medical benefits and no job security. Corrupt Perez extorts money from immigrants to whom he gives jobs and terrorizes the employees desperate to keep from being fired. But elsewhere in the city the Service Employees International Union has improved conditions for other janitors, and the situation is ripe for organizing the workers under Perez. Into the scene steps Adrien Brody as Sam, a personable, dedicated union organizer, but one not immune from making a careless mistake.
The film skillfully builds drama out of the mechanics of union organization and the resulting confrontations, yet all the while offering close-up depictions of the individuals involved so that we get to know them well. Especially gut-wrenching is the moving outburst by Elpidia Carrillo as Rosa, who pours out the story of how she has managed to survive, a history of which Maya is unaware. There are romantic sparks between Sam and Maya, but they seem natural rather than a forced effort to turn the film into a love story. Interesting internal front-office conflicts within the union are shown, as Sam fights pressure to drop the difficult situation in favor of an easier organizing target.
Sam's clever plan to take the issue public provides a measure of comic relief in the heat of battle.
This isn't a film in which everything works out simply even in the victory one expects. Loach and Laverty explore the ways in which a toll is taken and there is even understanding for the reasons one might scab. True, "Bread and Roses" resorts in part to melodrama, but the plot devices bring excitement to the battle and perspective on the personal stories in which the true strength of the film lies. The filmmakers have ripped drama from the headlines and turned a true-life situation reflecting a vital challenge into a dynamic motion picture. A Lions Gate Films release.
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