Enamorada

In Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946) María Félix is Beatriz, daughter of a wealthy landowner in Cholula, central Mexico. Pedro Armendáriz is General José Juan Reyes, leader of a battalion in the Revolution (1910-20), who comes to town to seize property, money, and any goods of value from the wealthy to pay for the Revolutionary aims. At first sight José Juan falls in love with Beatriz, who is engaged to marry a businessman from the US, Eduardo Roberts (Eugenio Rossi). Initially, she is unimpressed by José Juan and repeatedly rejects his advances, demonstrating her independent character mixed with her sense of her superior class position. A clear allegorical message is folded into her dilemma of choosing between José Juan and Eduardo regarding whether she (the landowning class) is more closely aligned with the US or Mexico. There is much toing and froing between the characters, and the question of whether Beatriz will accompany José Juan to his next battle is only resolved in the film’s final sequence. 

Enamorada begins and ends on the battlefield, but it is not a war film as they are generally understood. The events centre on a reprieve in field combat and the primary battles concern class, gender, and the role of faith and religion in 20th century Mexico. It is a romantic comedy, a love triangle elevated by the biggest stars of the time, María Félix and her co-star, Pedro Armendáriz.

Made as the peak productivity of studio film in Mexico (1930s-50s) was coming to an end, Enamorada is a fascinating coalescence of talent and skill. It was the result of the highly celebrated collaboration between director Emilio Fernández and director of photography Gabriel Figueroa,¹ alongside the less well-acknowledged but nonetheless significant editing work of the prolific Gloria Schoemann – all of whom over their careers shaped taste, styles, and themes that can still be found in Mexican film. Amongst this creative wellspring was the star, María Félix, a force of nature who defied gender norms and modelled a bold and unapologetic way of being that continues to prompt emulation and celebration. 

Félix (1914-2002) was a significant star and celebrity in her lifetime, with a considerable afterlife online thanks to her idiosyncratic persona.² Her career spanned 47 films between 1942 and 1970. A key figure in Mexico, she also acted in Spain, Italy, France, and Argentina, but was little known in the anglophone world because she refused to take roles that would reduce her to racialised Hollywood tropes. Of Félix’s 47 films, nine of them were set during the Mexican Revolution. These roles were mostly either as leader of men or as a sex worker with considerable agency. In a period of filmmaking when female characters were frequently punished with tragic ends for transgressing social norms or gendered expectations, Félix’s characters either received no punishment or, at worst, lost the love of a man who generally was not worthy of her. Enamorada’s ending is an example of the former because her union with José Juan is neither punishment nor compromise, it’s a claiming of a better Mexico through Beatriz, representing the wealthy landowners, willingly working alongside the rural working class, represented by José Juan. Beatriz has broken the rules and gets the romantic coupling she chooses.

Enamorada is an iconic role for Félix, where she demonstrates her performative dynamic range that mixed expansive and smaller movements. Beatriz/Félix slaps José Juan/Armendáriz, charges at him with a pole, leaps over furniture, and climbs walls. At other moments she arches her brow, moves her eyes slowly and expressively, and makes small adjustments to her posture. These shifts between gestural melodrama, which evoke comedic excess, and quiet, realist micro-gestures, that suggest internal emotional struggles, demonstrate Félix’s capacity to imbue a potentially slight character with nuance. Her performance also provides entertainment in a film grappling with big social issues that could otherwise tilt into the didactic.

 Félix is well-matched by Armendáriz, who was often Fernández’s proxy when he was not in the film. Armendáriz and Félix’s physicality is comparable: both are tall and broad with deep voices; his tendency towards stillness, moving little in the space, contrasts with her sudden outbursts; and his mobile eyebrows are countered by her well-deployed slow single brow arch.³ This complementary repertoire is used to dramatic and, sometimes, comedic effect by Schoemann’s edits, while Figueroa’s mix of wide and close shots create a sense that the story has broader narrative concerns.

Enamorada is an example of how Félix broke with rigid gender norms on film just as she did in her private life, which was subject to much gossip and media scrutiny. She had a lively and much-storied life because she was unafraid to flout social mores or norms around taste. For example, Félix spoke openly about having many different non-traditional relationships, stood by her son when he was outed as gay by the media, commissioned Cartier to make jewellery that resulted in aesthetic and technical innovations, and her eye for artistic talent led to her supporting the careers of multiple innovative and Avant Garde artists. Her autobiography recounts many of these moments and captures the confident, stylised, and playful persona she publicly presented. Her claim that, “I know that I contributed towards the liberation of Mexican women, who had been slaves to men when I was first getting my name known,” has a hyperbolic quality that succeeds in naming the sexism prevalent in society and the film industry, and her follow up statement that, “this doesn’t mean that my life should serve as an example to anyone, because you need to be incredibly egotistical to be like me,” clearly acknowledges her unique positioning that facilitated her breaking with convention.⁴ 

Her star persona and celebrity self sometimes overshadowed her film work, which has led to her being relatively understudied by scholars. This neglect has taken a curious form. In Enamorada there is an oft-cited closeup of her expressive eyes and brows that has prompted designers and publishers to use it across multiple book covers as a synecdoche of glamour and quality filmmaking from the period, all the while she has been glossed over in those same books. In this film and throughout her work and appearances, Félix’s eyes and brows have become part of her legend, reinforcing, and recirculating what these gestures are projected to mean.⁵ 

Her fans feel differently. Félix has a rich digital afterlife because her independent spirit has given scope for vivid and lively discourse and reinterpretation. Her performance in Enamorada captured the imagination of fans, who have edited and shared supercuts of the melodramatic slaps (often alongside slaps from her other films), focalised on details of her micro-gestures, and imitated her iconic looks. In Enamorada Beatriz/Félix’s refusal to conform is integral to this persona. 

Therefore, at the end of Enamorada Beatriz/Félix’s decision to join José Juan is about her stepping into battle to create a better Mexico on her own terms. Whilst the power dynamics between the genders are left unresolved, Félix’s star turn alongside Armendáriz’s subtle performance and tentative relief that she is to walk by his side, does not suggest dominance of one over the other. Instead, up to that point it has been made abundantly clear that José Juan is attracted to Beatriz’s feisty and assertive nature and she to his idealism, thus sidestepping the inference that one of them is ceding power. Félix as Beatriz is not tameable but is integral to the shape of this new future nation. José Juan needs her because the Mexico that they are battling for is one that is in flux (in the 1910s as well as the 1940s) as it grapples with gender and class dynamics, and Beatriz/Félix is very much up for that fight. 

Enamorada (1946 Mexico 99 mins)

Prod: Benito Alazraki Dir: Emilio Fernández Scr: Benito Alazraki, Iñigo de Martino, Benito Alazraki (uncredited) Phot: Gabriel Figueroa Mus: Eduardo Hernández Moncada Ed: Gloria Schoemann Prod Des: Manuel Fontanals

Cast: María Félix, Pedro Armendáriz, Fernando Fernández, José Morcillo, Eduardo Arozamena, Miguel Inclán, Manuel Dondé, Eugenio Rossi, Norma Hill, Juan García, José Torvay, Pascual García Peña

Endnotes