Incest in the highlands: the disturbing anecdote that inspired the new Peruvian film “Reinaldo Cutipa”

Reinaldo Cutipa lives in a town where almost nothing happens. He works in the winery at his house, he rides his motorcycle to transport products, and sometimes he gets drunk too. He, who lives with his mother, apparently doesn’t have much else in his life. But the more time you spend with him, the more the cracks in this quiet life become evident, the family dynamics that make you raise your eyebrow first, then gape in amazement later.

The origin of this character and his affairs are based on a real event. “I worked in a store selling cell phone accessories. So, every weekend I saw a man of 30, 35 years old, who already had a family. He came to his house drunk on him every weekend; He would miss three days, and he would appear all emaciated, filthy,” Oscar Gonzáles Apaza, Puno filmmaker and director of “Reinaldo Cutipa,” told El Comercio. “This man’s wife was upset, but his mother wasn’t. The mother, rather, treated him nicely. [Le decía] ‘Why did you come like this?’ She wiped his drool. She brought him some broth, all that.”

Instead of letting this scene pass as something anecdotal, González Apaza did what a filmmaker would do: imagine and transform. “It comes to my mind, ‘if this always happens [en la calle], what will happen inside the house’. So we wrote the film there,” says the director, who is co-author of the script with Jaime Luna Victoria. In the film, Reinaldo’s (Jesús Luque) life changes when he meets Rosaura (Danitza Pilco), a teenager who sells gasoline with gallon jugs. The bond that arises between the two causes distrust in Reinaldo’s mother, Matilda (Sylvia Majo), who does not want to see her son leave.

highland drama

In his film, Gonzáles began to capture this unusual relationship between mother and son little by little, first with indications, such as jealousy, and then with facts. This bond has the characters tied up, it is an emotional dependence that does not leave any of those involved ready to live their own lives. In the film there is also something of the Peruvian reality: while in other countries it is common for children to leave home at the end of adolescence, in Peru this is not so common. One explanation among many is the problem of access to one’s own home.

The relationship of a son with his mother is not the same as that of a son with his father. The filmmaker explains that it is not easy to talk about a mother based on behaviors like those shown in his film; situation that is attributed more to the man, the father, despite the fact that in both cases there is psychological damage to the children. In the film this relationship is sustained by Luque’s acting work, but also by that of Sylvia Majo, who conveys the overprotection that she professes for her son. “That mother who oppresses, she transmits that. “I am very grateful to her for agreeing to be in the film,” said the director.

A similar situation occurs with Danitza Pilco, who, as a minor, found out about the film through a casting. She is not an actress, in the same way that Jesús Luque was not when she passed the casting for “Manco Cápac” by Henry Vallejo (who is a producer on “Reinaldo Cutipa”). “I liked that bravery about her, that strength about her,” says the filmmaker.

What happens at home stays there, but situations do not work in a vacuum. Reinaldo Cutipa’s relationships lead to a breaking point in which drama arises; Without a doubt, a story for the big screen.