Saturday, June 5, 2021

A Pink Suburban.

During the 90’s & early 2000’s, the Chevrolet Suburban was the manliest & coolest SUV to own. Every Mexican dad & uncle wanted one and if they got one, they were the shit. They were a badass amongst their crowd and were probably a narco as well. Or maybe just a union delegate. Or maybe just worked their asses off hard and somehow still managed to acquire their dream vehicle that gave them clout for years to come. 

The Chevy Suburban was immortalized in many narcocorridos since it was the preferred vehicle for many Mexican drug traffickers in those days. There were corridos about Suburbans loaded with drugs heading down to Chicago & Los Angeles, then there were corridos about various colored Suburbans such as black, white & green. The most well-known Suburban was “La Suburban Dorada”; which is about a gold-colored, bulletproof & ultra-fast Suburban that some claim was owned by the infamous narco Arturo Beltran Leyva. The Suburban Dorada corrido was so popular that it got a movie portrayal and has become a cult hit of sorts since. In the early 2000’s, Los Gavilleros De La Sierra recorded a narcocorrido about a different kind of Suburban and it differed from the others because it wasn’t the typical Suburban that we were all very much familiar with. This Suburban was pink colored and was driven by 2 gay drug traffickers. Disguised as gays that is.


After a drug deal goes awry—Felipe (Carlos Samperio) manages to evade the police by hiding out in a bar he randomly comes across. The owner of the bar is an ultra-flamboyant gay man called Zamira (Cesar Bono) and he takes a liking to Felipe and manages to help him hide from the cops by having him disguise as a gay dancer at the bar. Felipe ends up staying at Zamira’s home and tells him everything that’s happened to him and why he’s doing what he’s doing. Zamira & Felipe then form a friendship and partner up for Felipe’s drug exchanges that he must do in order to please his iron-fisted drug lord boss Don Ramiro (Miguel Angel Rodriguez). In order to pass through smoothly & evade the cops; Zamira gets Felipe’s white Suburban painted pink and they both dress up flamboyantly gay which consist of purple button-up shirts, pink-colored feather boas around their necks and they even put on some makeup on their faces.


La Suburban Rosita ("The Pink Suburban") is quite an interesting movie since it manages to be a narco movie and also a comedy at the same time. The movie is filled with the usual narco characters such as spiteful policemen, a no fucks given drug boss and the main character Felipe is poor man that gets himself involved in narco work because he’s caring for an ailing family member. There’s also gun-firing action in the movie that is satisfying & the best one being near the end. And of course I cannot forget the infamous Suburban in the movie. It’s colored white at first and when it switches to pink—it’s still a very macho & badass SUV. It being pink just makes it differ from all the others and not to be seen as weak at all!


The gay portrayal is the main humor of the movie and it’s all provided by comedic actor Cesar Bono who’s no stranger to playing roles like this. During that era and beforehand, gay men in Mexican movies like this were often portrayed as comedic counterparts and tragic/spiteful individuals as mostly seen in the films of Enrique Gomez Vadillo. Cesar Bono plays a comedic counterpart and an exaggerated one at that. But despite the portrayal being the way it is, the character Zamira is also seen as someone who just wants to care for his new friend Felipe since he sees how good of a person he really is. Beyond the crazy colorful outfits & overly-flamboyant gay attitude—Zamira is still very human. A very good friend at that. 



Director Alejandro Todd has an intriguing filmography which is full of amazing action/crime titles and fun comedy titles as well. He managed to pull off both of those genres into one with La Suburban Rosita and I was satisfied with it. It is intriguing, humorous & entertaining all the way through. Don’t skip it. Don’t miss it.