Bella
Allow me to sum this movie up. If you’re pregnant and not ready for a kid, a mysteriously selfless Jesus figure will come out of the woodwork, adopt the child and raise her until you’re ready to be a mother. Yeah…
Okay, let me back up. The premise of Bella is that Nina is fired for being late to her waitressing job because she was buying and using a home pregnancy test. She’s pregnant. Jose is the chef at the same restaurant, which is run by his older brother Manny, and abandons his post on an important day to talk to and comfort Nina. He’s the Christ figure, and I’m not just saying that because he spends most of the film in a scrubby kitchen uniform and that he’s got the stereotypical beard and hair, but that helps. If you saw one of his many close-ups without context, you would never guess he was a chef in Brooklyn. Oh, and at one point he’s mistaken for a beggar, but I digress. It’s worth noting that while the two worked together, they appear to know terribly little about each other. Also, the film pathologically avoids any romantic connection between them. It’s impossible to discuss these characters without addressing the ending, which I will do, so you’ve been warned.
Most of the film takes place in that single day, beginning with Nina being fired in the morning. By the next morning, after Nina remains fairly sure she couldn’t be a proper mother, Jose has decided that he will adopt the child and given the denouement, apparently raises her by himself for some 4-6 years (I can’t tell the child’s age) before Nina returns. For what, we have no idea, and speculating is a rather baffling process. To become a true mother? The possibilities are all uncomfortable for a film that ends and wants the audience to believe everything turned out just right. It’s completely ridiculous for this man to dedicate himself to someone else’s kid, out of the blue, for several years. Worse, it’s a total cop-out. It avoids the abortion question that rises to the surface several times in the film. It also somewhat flies in the face of Nina’s spoken belief that she would not be able to carry a child for nine months only to give her away. I fail to see how the film’s solution doesn’t fall into that same problem. Sure, she returns to the child in a few years, but c’mon.
Now, Jose has a little background. He was a football (soccer) star but lost his career after running over a little girl with his car. After some time in jail, poof, he’s the most amazing man on the planet. What’s important is that he feels deep regret over that incident, and that we’re shown that the killed little girl liked butterflies. Go back to the end, and as Nina arrives to meet her daughter for the first time since she was an infant, and the three walk towards the beach in some perplexing family reunion, a butterfly appears and the camera tracks it into the sky. Yes, Bella overtly compares this moment to the other little girl’s death. In that case, is Jose’s decision to adopt and raise the child just some way of helping bring a life into the world after taking another? We’re meant to believe this makes everything right, but all I could think was that the other mother still lost her daughter, and that there’s something creepy in Jose’s motivation to replace one for the other, in his mind at least. Furthering that idea, the two girls look quite a bit alike.
Between the beginning and the ending, Jose and Nina travel around chatting, mostly of family. Eventually they end up at his family’s house and she sees what a happy, loving family is life, not having one herself. She learns of Jose’s past and of his brother being adopted yet still loved all the same. Jose gives Manny a lecture or two about treating his employees poorly and only caring for his restaurant’s bottom line. The two make up by film’s end, with Manny meekly buying a new pot that Jose said the kitchen desperately needed, and Jose cooking breakfast for the pair to heal over. Bella is a movie about family, which is partially what makes the resolution so bizarre, what with the whole giving-her-kid-up-only-to-return-years-later thing.
Unfortunately, Bella has little relation to the real world. There are few selfless saviors out there that will drop their lives to fix your problems. Sometimes, you’re just going to have to figure out a way to help yourself.
