Product Description

Set in a magnificent recreation of 17th Century Mexico and based on a true story, I, THE WORST OF ALL is the portrait of a brilliant and beautiful poet, Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz (Assumpta Serna), who enters the convent to pursue her love of writing and goes on to gain international renown as one of the best poets in the Golden Age of Spanish poetry. However, this is the height of the Inquisition and her intellectual prowess soon leads to clashes with the Archbishop of Mexico (Lautaro Murua).

Sister Juana is protected only by the beautiful new Vicereine (Dominique Sanda), who befriends and shelters Sister Juana, while simultaneously becoming her erotic muse. The very existence of their friendship flouts convention, but as long as the Viceroy's tour of duty lasts, Sister Juana is safe. Based on the book "The Traps of Faith" by Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, I THE WORST OF ALL is considered director Maria Luisa Bemberg's feminist masterpiece and was her last film.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54263 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-03-25
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 107 minutes

Review
Charged with an ambiguity and an irony that is electrifying... bristles with a spirit of feminism and has us pondering its inescapable implications for the Roman Catholic Church of today: What of the status of its women, of freedom of expression and intellectual pursuit? --Los Angeles Times

Review
Passionate, riveting, magnificent! --New York Post

Review
An erotically charged and impassioned work! Assumpta Serna is luminous! --Village Voice

Customer Reviews

Hombres necios que anunciáis a la mejor sinrazón...
Don't be fooled by the cheap publicity on the cover: this is not a movie about lesbian nuns, but the true story of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of Spanish literature's greatest poets of all time, and perhaps the first feminist of the Western Hemisphere, circa 1685.

Assumpta Serna shines as the fierce, beautiful (the resemblance is striking) and brilliant Sor Juana, the Mexican wondergirl who took the vows hoping to get an education, astonished her friends, foes and times, and was later ordered to silence by the Church for the sole sin of being an intelligent woman.

Based upon the book by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, I, THE WORST OF ALL is a precious little Argentine film, with the look of a Vermeer and the passionate heart of its heroine. You will certainly enjoy it more if fluent in Spanish (since Sor Juana's poetry is like written Mozart), but if not, see it anyway. I'm sure you'll thank me.

P.S. You can get the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz here on Amazon books. You don't know what you've been missing!

STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL FILM-MAKING
One of my best friends saw that I was reading a novel about Sor Juana, SOR JUANA'S SECOND DREAM, by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and recommended this film to me -- with the admonishment to ignore the tawdry blurb on the cover: "Lesbian passions seething behind convent walls", indeed! How ridiculous -- it would be like describing FORREST GUMP as "partying with coeds in a dorm room after hours". It's a cheap attempt to draw the wrong conclusions about this moving story. Don't let it put you off.

This film about the amazing woman who has been called Mexico's 'Tenth muse' -- a reference to the title Plato bestowed on Sappho -- is a beautiful piece of film-making. Even considering the scenes that were meant to be outdoors, that were obviously shot on a sound stage, this is a lovely experience. The direction is superb, the acting amazingly sensitive -- I was enthralled, and I usually don't enjoy films with subtitles.

Sor Juana was an amazing woman -- intellectual, creative, always pushing her own boundaries, and brave. For a woman in her era (seventeenth century Mexico) to profess that women had just as much right to an education, to learning, as men, set her against some powerful forces -- mainly the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Her courage and determination in the face of such opposition is inspiring -- it's easy to see why she's seen as a hero by so many.

Excellent biography, Not a "Lesbian" Love Film
The video states that the film is about hot lesbian love inside the convent walls. Wrong! There are a few implied moments but nothing graphic.
This film gives the viewer an accurate depiction of the life of one of the best authors of any genre of literature. I first saw this film in a Latin American literature university classroom. It is so good that I would like to show it in my high school classroom.
Sor Juana was quite adept at placing a mirror in front of the faces of the male hierarchy and they didn't like it. She paid for it and we gained from her pain.
There is great historical value in this biographical film as well. It gives the viewer an idea of what life was like during the Spanish Inquisition in "New Spain" or Mexico.
I know the vendors believe that sex will sell this film. But, they are billing it all wrong. It is an intellectual foreign film. Why cheapen it by giving potential buyers a deceptive description of the content?