★★★ One of the great trends that is going through world television is generating a formula capable of nucleating the fascination for the eighties, plots with a gender perspective and dramatic thrillers. This Mexican fiction series is a clear exponent of this style that, moreover, encourages a greater bet by adding the Latin American story among its condiments. Here the argument is set against the background of the preparation of the candidates for Miss Mexico and exposes how behind the glamor of the pageant hides a harsh reality and a dark world. Because the contestants will compete not only to win the crown, but to get out of the contest alive. Nothing less.
Every Sunday in a block of two episodes a night, the proposal in the form of a dramatic thriller, directed by Argentina’s Lucía Puenzo (“XXY”, “Wakolda”), produced by Chilean Pablo Larraín (“No”, “Jackie”) and Juan de Dios Larraín, tells in its eight chapters the story of Concepción (Ilse Salas), former beauty queen and now matriarch of the most important Aztec pageant. Together with a team of expert make-up artists, trainers and even plastic surgeons, she receives thirty-two girls from cities and towns at her rural farm “La Encantada” who seek to become the winner of the year 1989. Each one of them The contestants bring their past with them, as well as the fantasy of becoming the new Mexican queen. The girls will have to undergo hard training for three months in order to reach the final and reach the precious crown. But everything gets complicated when that routine quickly turns into a nightmare when they find themselves involved in events that threaten to enslave them and subject them to a prostitution network.
El envío, on the one hand, introspects the place of women in this type of competition and questions the notion of “beauty” when power is based on appearances. It also offers a very fluid narrative by telling the story of its protagonists individually and giving each of them an episode that allows them to delve into their current experience and her past. Thus we know how they lived before and, most importantly, what pushed them to appear at the meeting.
In short, the themes are the objectification of the female body, aesthetic patterns, and sexual harassment. It is valuable, from today’s perspective, to remember what we were, as a global society, just over thirty years ago.
