FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; A Niece Rummages in a Rich and Enigmatic Uncle's Closet

What do we really know about anybody else? An entire Hollywood genre, the film noir, has devoted itself to the notion that the real truth about anyone is usually sordid, that wealth is synonymous with corruption, that the fancier the closet the nastier its secrets. In "The Devil Never Sleeps," Lourdes Portillo, a Chicana film maker, takes the role of cinematic gumshoe as she investigates the mysterious death of her beloved multimillionaire Uncle Oscar. Although the concept is promising, the movie's conclusions are too vague and scattered for her spadework to dig up a compelling drama.

Using vintage snapshots, old home movies and interviews, the film builds a biographical portrait of Oscar Ruiz Almeida, a Mexican rancher who amassed a fortune exporting vegetables to the United States and went on to become a powerful politician and businessman. A go-getter and a charmer, Uncle Oscar married twice. With his first wife, who died of cancer, he adopted two children. After she died, he married a much younger woman who produced two more children from artificial insemination. Unfortunately for the film, the second wife refused to appear on camera, although excerpts from several telephone conversations are heard.

It's small wonder that she would not be filmed. She is depicted by Oscar's sisters and his first wife's family as a greedy, scheming parvenu who maneuvered the two children from his first marriage out of their rightful inheritance. Intercut with the gossip are snippets of high drama from Mexican soap operas.

Oscar Ruiz Almeida died of a bullet wound, in a sports complex. Did he kill himself? Or was there foul play? The film compiles enough conflicting stories, theories and rumors to suggest that several people, including the second wife, had a motive for murder. If he shot himself, was it because he had terminal cancer? Or AIDS? It is even suggested that late in his life, Oscar turned homosexual and led a clandestine gay life. The more Oscar is discussed, the more enigmatic he seems.