Doña Lupe

When two police officers take lodgings at the house of Done Lupe, they have no doubt that they will come to rule the roost. They casually change the locks and invite their friends for a wild party, confident the elderly widower is powerless to act. But Done Lupe has other ideas and she won’t go down without a fight. Done Lupe was Guillermo Del Toro’s ninth short, made when he was 19. He cites the Mexican noir writer Paco Ignacio Tabo as a major influence and, like Tabo, makes use of unmistakably Mexican settings and ‘low rent’ characters. Anchoring the story within the same four walls, we see a technique that Del Toro goes on to use in Chronos, The Devil’s Backbone and again in Pan’s Labyrinth. ‘I’m not that interested in large scale urban apocalypse. I’m interested in little things that happen underground or indoors…dramas that happen and essentially remain unseen to most people.’ As with the previous films, Del Toro wrote, produced and directed, eventually even taking on the role of cinematographer as well when it emerged the original DP was visually impaired. ‘If incompetent mother-fuckers like me did this short, continue having a career and eventually makes features, there is hope for everyone’.