Movie

The Fourth House: A portrait of Elena Garro

2002 · 40 min

A wry, bittersweet sit with a brilliant, embittered woman whose acid memories blur into a haunted, vivid self-portrait.

Directed by: José Antonio Cordero
Genres: Documentary
Starring: Elena Garro

Overview: Elena Garro, Mexican writer and former wife of Octavio Paz, returns to Mexico after more than 20 years in exile, accompanied by her 18 cats, her daughter and "two trunks full of insults" to look for a house. This documentary is an impressionist portrait of Garro's final four years of life, recounting remembrances of her delightful childhood, her marriage to Paz, the ups and downs of her literary career, the '68 Tlatelolco tragedy, her break with the intellectual world, her flight from Mexico followed by exile and the disenchanted return, all filtered through her prodigious, acid imagination.

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Directed by: José Antonio Cordero
Genres: Documentary
Starring: Elena Garro

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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone: melancholicstrength 2 of 3
satiricalstrength 2 of 3
cynicalstrength 2 of 3
warmstrength 1 of 3
Pacing: measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention: engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes: memory
identity
isolation
politics
art
Places: big city
home
Era: contemporary
Audience: adult
Form: nonlinear
true story
Content intensity: Gore none
Language mild
Violence mild
Sex mild

All scales, 0 to 10

Scales, 0 to 10
Scale	Value	0 to 10
Action	1
Horror	1
Humour	4
Realism	9
Romance	2
Tension	3
Darkness	5
Complexity	6
Emotional weight	7

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