This programme is brought to you by IBM.
Good evening and welcome to Movie of the Week.
Our film tonight is a first class production from one of Mexico's best directors.
Arturo Ripstein's Queen of the Night, a 1994 production which competed last year at the Cannes Film Festival.
Ripstein describes his film, the original title is La Reina de la Noche, as an imaginary biography of Lucha Reyes,
a celebrated chanteuse who was famous in the 30s and early 40s for singing in the Cancion Ranchera style.
Patrizia Reyes Spindola is magnificent as Reyes, who comes across as a complex, fascinating and very strong woman.
Ripstein borrows a quote from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
to justify his decision to film the legend of Reyes rather than the precise truth.
The film opens in 1939 when Reyes was 33 years old and living with her formidable mother who ran a bordello in Mexico City.
This is a rich, exciting biography with splendid music and larger than life characters.
And among the supporting cast, film buffs may spot the British film director Alex Cox, that's him in the hat.
He made Sid and Nancy and Reaper Man and he plays Klaus Eder, a German immigrant and devoted fan of Reyes.
Here it is then, a richly baroque film from Mexico, Queen of the Night.
SBS advises that this program has been classified M.A.
It contains strong sex scenes and occasional coarse language.