What is a place if it is not on the map? What are people if they are not recognized? Felipe Holguin Caro’s La Suprema asks these questions in an intimate drama set in a remote Caribbean town in Colombia. La Suprema is not on any map and its Afro-Colombian population feels similarly erased. Modest in its ambitions but imbued with a real sense of place, this brilliant drama about a boxing match is a quiet revelation. It serves as a vivid portrait of a society longing for glory and, perhaps more importantly, for long-deserved dignity.
Everyone in La Suprima knows Anastasio Baez. He is a boxer making a name for himself on the world stage. His niece Laureana (Elizabeth Martinez) admires him from afar. It’s been a long time since he left town for good, but his boxing skills still inspire Laurana, who spends private moments in her room practicing her left hook and stance, pictures of her uncle hanging on her mirror (and later hidden, fearing it would explode) and seeing her grandmother absorbed in such inappropriate activities). So when Anastasio prepares to fight for the world boxing title, Laureana takes it upon herself to find a way for the city to watch the fight live.
The problem is that no one in La Suprima has a TV, let alone electricity. This is mostly a dirt-road town where some families spend their days not so much ignoring the outside world as resigning themselves to ignoring it. And so the race begins to find a way to get the former and secure the latter – all before the match is broadcast in just a few days. It’s a challenge that will require a lot of the city’s residents coming together, even at the risk of complaints about La Suprema’s conditions costing them a moment of glory that they still hope will finally put them — literally and figuratively — on the map.
Such a premise alone might have made Holguín Caro’s film play like any number of small-town dramas where community-led efforts culminate in some celebratory episode (as is the case with a film that would have focused solely on Laurana’s boxing aspirations). However, La Suprema only uses the boxing match as a narrative anchor to spin a broader story about the perils and promises of success.
As the women of the town scramble to raise money to buy a television set for sale in the nearby city of Cartagena, a personal and cultural bubble is created all the while. There is a terse relationship between Laurana and her grandmother when it comes to her sexual display (the teenage girl hates dresses and is scolded for looking like a tomboy). There’s the strained relationship with Anastasio’s former coach, Efrain (Antonio Jimenez), who has his reasons for not even wanting to see his former student’s big chance at glory. Perhaps most pressing is the poverty and abandonment that keeps La Suprema in the dark – all the result of policies and politicians who do not see fit to invest in this Afro-Colombian community.
Holguín Caro and Andy Sierra’s script attempts to navigate these various subplots with grace. It mostly works, but sometimes it feels like “La Suprema” is trying to juggle too many tonal shifts. Some parts involving two teenage boys trying to fix a generator and then stealing some electricity from a nearby neighbor might be a bit loosely theatrical, while the quiet moments of a heart-to-heart between Efrain and Loriana can feel like they belong to a completely different world. film.
But when “La Suprema” settles into a register as it surveys the lush greenery of the city landscape, the film truly comes alive. Mauricio Vidal has a keen eye for capturing the natural beauty of the Caribbean, and his formal framework pays careful attention to the way the environment is truly a titular character here. Likewise, there is beauty and resilience in the shots of women singing and washing their clothes in a nearby body of water, showing contentment with who they are and what they have. Who cares if the boy who was once born there now appears on television for the world to see?
As the film shows, the Afro-Colombian community is often abandoned, if not completely erased from history and geography. Sports eventually became one of the only places where their achievements were celebrated. It is fitting, then, that Holguín Caro turns such a moment of triumph and potential glory into an interrogation of the neglect that people like Laureana and Efrain experience in their daily lives. Playfully taking a feel-good genre and turning it on its head with its powerful final moments, Columbia’s film is a beautiful study in the dignity of the people it depicts.