Slideshow
BREAD AND ROSES
Please note: the 35mm print we're screening has both Spanish and English subtitles
U.K. Germany, Spain, 2000
Directed by Ken Loach
Written by Paul Laverty
With Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo
In Spanish and English with Spanish and English subtitles
Approx. 110 mins. 35mm.
“The call for 'bread and roses', as a present-day union organizer named Sam Shapiro (Adrien Brody) explains in the movie, originated among the striking textile workers in Lowell, Mass., in 1912. Those workers, many of them women and immigrants, like the Los Angeles office cleaners Sam represents, asserted their rights not only to sustenance, but to beauty as well. Mr. Loach, a tireless cinematic champion of the underdog, has marched under this banner from the start. In BREAD AND ROSES, there is a long, passionate discussion in a storage room after hours, in which the janitors in a sleek glass office high-rise debate the pros and cons of union membership. There are also several tense kitchen-table arguments about the conflicting demands of family security and worker solidarity. As if to balance these moments, there is also a buoyant dance party, a sweet, tentative love story, and, most of all, Pilar Padilla in the role of Maya, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico whose mischief and militancy lift the film beyond didacticism and transform it into a vital and complex piece of political art.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Reviews
“An engaging, enjoyable and provocative movie about the human injustices of race, sex and class accumulating in the new 21st century order. It's a film with red blood in its veins.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian