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For its U.S. premiere at Screamfest, Edgar Nito’s A Fisherman’s Tale (Un Cuento de Pescadores, 2024) offers a slow burn narrative introducing audiences to the Mexican legend of La Miringua. Comparable to the perhaps better-known La Llorona, and similar to Mayan legends of the Xtabay in Guatemala and the Yucatan, La Miringua is a legend from Purépecha culture, also known as the Tarascan culture, an indigenous culture of Mexico, primarily located in the state of Michoacán, known for its pre-Columbian empire that rivaled the Aztec empire in size. La Miringua is an evil spirit who lives in, presumably, Lake Pátzcuaro, and lures fishermen to their deaths by appearing as a beautiful woman in the water. This mirrors pre-Columbian reverence and fear of the lake, which was central to Purépecha life. The lake was considered a sacred place, a gateway to the afterlife, and was personified by the goddess Cuerauáperi. The legend says that La Miringua, whose name means "forgetfulness," causes people to lose their sense of time and space, ultimately leading them into the lake where their sins are punished. It punishes sinners by drowning them, particularly men who are drunk or driven by greed, though in Nito’s filmic version La Miringua punishes women as well (equal opportunity retribution!!). In some versions of the Miringua story, the spirit can also cause a state of madness, where a person wanders great distances unconsciously. This aspect of the folklore likely connects to older shamanistic beliefs in which spirits could inhabit or influence a person's consciousness. Nito incorporates both aspects of the legend into his film.
Watching A Fisherman’s Tale reminded me of comments made by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien at a December 2002 seminar and published in Rouge magazine. His concern was about finding new directions and new genres for Taiwan's film industry and he approached that issue from various angles. One such angle was the effect of J-horror on Asian cinema. He stated: "We can now approach the issue from another direction after the success of the Japanese film Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1988), which was the ignition point that brought about an explosion of ghost movies. Just like Shiri was the ignition point of Korean cinema, Ring started the Asian frenzy for making ghost movies. The crucial element of their success lies in the use of local elements. The films are firmly rooted in local culture."
I read that to say that ghost stories particularly benefit from the use of local elements, which is to say local superstitions and fears, and A Fisherman’s Tale comports with that benefit. Nito’s film falls within a realm of ethnographic horror (for all effects, elevated genre), less compelled to jump-scare its viewers (though there are one or two startles) and oriented more to a sense of brooding dread and consequential sufferance. Situating his tale in a small fishing village on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro, Nito weaves four associated stories of villagers whose “sins” lead to their falling prey to La Miringua. Awarded a Special Mention for Best Ensemble Performance when the film had its National Premiere at the Morelia International Film Festival, roughly a dozen actors play out four doomed narratives.
Federico (“Fede”), portrayed by Jorge A. Jimenez, is a lonely fisherman who becomes entranced by Aurora (Renata Vaca), a beautiful young woman who appears in his fishing boat. Her taunting seduction mocks him into unhinged madness, especially as it gradually dawns on him that Aurora is a ghost, presumably drowned by La Miringua in the late 1800s. Regardless, he can’t reconcile his reason to the facts before him and continues to be lured by his hallucinations. Alejandra Herrera portrays Berenice, a young woman whose ambivalent sexuality attracts both a lesbian Alicia (Daniela Momo) and Carlos (Hoze Meléndez); an erotic triangle that dooms all three. Alex (Augustin Cornejo) lives with his grandmother and sister Karen (Bibiana Godínez) and is in the conflicted position of being attracted to Estefi (Anna Díaz), the sister of Karen’s despised rival Estela (Myriam Bravo). Admittedly, it was a bit difficult to track who was who at first as the ensemble all fall relatively within the same age group, but this served as a purposeful indication that La Miringua was cursing the entire village, something observed early on by Jesús (Andrés Delgado) who tries to warn his fellow fishermen that the lake is cursed and the fish rotten. Rather than believe him, they suspect he is trying to disrupt their livelihood so Artemio (Nóe Hernandez) takes it upon himself to eliminate the threat to their business, and ends up being eliminated in turn.
In other words, as confusing as all these intersecting plot lines might sound, what’s being said is that a village that once thrived in harmony with the lake falls from grace as villagers blinded by their dark desires bring fear, hate, and eventual death into their community. A viewer could make a game, I suppose, out of guessing whose sins are whose—is Alicia’s lesbianism more of a sin, let’s say, than Berenice’s impressionable ambivalence? Is Fede’s unbridled, if unhinged, passion more of a sin than Jesús’s fear and paranoia, or Artemio’s greed? Their sins—either directly or indirectly—create a collective curse, whose retribution is administered by La Miringua, chillingly enacted by Ruby Vizcarra, as a pale white amphibious creature with scaled skin and sharp teeth lurking in the water weeds; a testament to the film’s tagline “Ya nada se puede hacer ... solo esperar la Muerte” (“there’s nothing anyone can do … except wait for Death”).
