Doña Herlinda y su hijo, inspired by a Jorge López Páez’s story, is the best known and most internationally disseminated early work of Mexican gay cinema, a theme that would fully emerge in Mexican cinema sometime later. Filmed in Guadalajara, a city once characterized by its extreme conservatism, the film uses corrosive humour and a subtle ambivalence to attack prevailing family values. However, not even a filmmaker with the maturity of Hermosillo could move away from representing women simply as the means of biological reproduction, in this case, for the ultimate gratification of a homosexual couple. They have unflinching support from one of their mothers, a role played by Mrs. Guadalupe Gómez del Toro, the real life mother of the renowned filmmaker and writer Guillermo del Toro, who collaborated on the film as production manager and even appears briefly as a supporting character. The film was blown up to 35mm and was consequently distributed in commercial cinemas, both in Mexico and abroad.

Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro