‘Corina’ Review: A Refreshingly Endearing, Surprisingly Incisive Defense of Happy Endings That Plays Like Mexican ‘Amélie’
variety.comCarlos Aguilar In the decades since its release to critical acclaim and record-setting grosses, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amélie,” the whimsical dramedy about a quirky Parisian woman finding love through random acts kindness, has endured in pop culture and influenced a generation of filmmakers, both for better and certainly for worse.
Few times, however, have the imitators been as undeniably apparent about what they borrowed from it as Mexican writer-director Urzula Barba Hopfner, in her refreshingly endearing, subtly stylized debut “Corina.” A 20-year-old agoraphobic living in Guadalajara — México’s second largest metropolis and Guillermo del Toro’s hometown — the title character, played by Naian González Norvind (“New Order”), wears boots, a maxi skirt and sports the French bob haircut emblematic of actress Audrey Tautou as Amélie Poulain.
As if the visual parallels with Jeunet’s romantic fable weren’t already glaring, “Corina” begins with voice over narration over flashbacks that recount the protagonist’s tragedy-stained childhood in the aftermath of her father’s untimely death.
The isolating tendencies of her fear-stricken mother Reneé (Carolina Politi) reduced Corina’s world to only a few blocks. She has never traveled outside of the limited demarcation she considers safe.
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