Film still from Doña Herlinda and Her Son
Guadalupe Gómez, who played the title role in the 1985 landmark queer movie Doña Herlinda and Her Son by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, and who was mother of Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, died on Friday, October 14. The announcement was made by his son, when he presented the world premiere of his stop animation feature film Pinocchio last Friday at the BFI London Film Festival.
“I just want to say, my mother just passed away, and this was very special for her and me,” said del Toro. “This is not only the first time you’ll see the movie, it’s the first time she’ll see the movie with us.”
The pioneering Mexican comedy Doña Herlinda and Her Son tells the story of Rodolfo, a closeted doctor, and his younger paramour Ramón, who desperately need more privacy from neighbors and Rodolfo’s overbearing mother, Doña Herlinda, to carry on their affair. Ironically enough, Doña Herlinda herself provides the solution by inviting Ramón to live in her house, in her son’s bedroom no less. Doña Herlinda has a grand plan for her son, one involving very alternative living arrangements, quite subversive for its time and for Mexican cinema as a whole. While the two men cavort tenderly, Rodolfo obliges to his mother’s arranged dates with various women, even marriage is not too much to ask to satisfy mother.
Gómez also acted in the short films Felicidad de la señora Consuelo (1985) by Arturo Villaseñor and del Toro’s Geometría (1987). The second short film by the then aspiring filmmaker del Toro is a short fantasy horror comedy film loosely based on Fredric Brown's short story, Naturally. The film tells the story of a boy who gets in trouble with his widowed mother (played by Gómez) for having failed his geometry exam for the third time.
Watch Geometría:
