Marvin Lemus | Vámonos / 2015

dressing a corpse

by Douglas Messerli

 

Erick Castrillon and Moira Morel (screenplay), Marvin Lemus (director) Vámonos / 2015 [13 minutes]

 

Vámanos is a comedic gem about death; yet this is no Ortonian hoot, with side glances, winks, and whistles, but a serious study in how to release even a dead body from the chains of normalcy that threatened to delimit and delete it during its life.

    For unknown reasons, Mac (Vico Ortiz) has died before the opening credits, and her mother, Rosa (Norma Maldonado) accompanied by Hope (Jessica Camacho) enter a high-end clothier to pick out the proper funeral attire for the dead Latina.

    Without much ado, Rosa quickly chooses a dark purple dress for her daughter, while Hope selects a pair of black pants and a white blouse, trying to show it to the mother before she purchases the dress. But Rosa, obviously of strong will and clearly great disdain for Hope, dismissed the younger girl’s choice as shopping attire, while hers is the appropriate attire for a funeral. She also wants to purchase some hair extensions.

     Hope tries again to convince the older woman that the outfit she has chose is color coordinated and has a more appropriate flow, but even as she attempts to explain her choice to the impervious mother, another woman appears, offering her condolences in Spanish to Rosa. Rosa quickly introduces the girl as Esperanza, “Margarita’s friend.” ‘Oh, I see,” replies the sympathizer, as Rosa almost roles her eyes in obvious disapproval of the younger woman.

     At that point Hope loses it, hurrying off to a small dressing room to gather herself and her own grieving. But Rosa is already at the cubicle door, demanding to know what the girl is doing in there and insisting that they need to go immediately.

     Hope begs just for a moment.

    But suddenly she turns and shouts through the door: “You didn’t even know Mac. You didn’t even know your daughter. You have no idea who she was!”

     Rosa responds: “She is my daughter and she will be buried in a dress. And if you don’t like it you are welcome to not attend.”

     We have witnessed this kind of homophobia time and again in LGBTQ cinema, most notably in Tom Ford’s A Single Man (2009) wherein the companion of the dead son is not even invited to the funeral.

     In the next frame of director Marvin Lemus’ film, Hope is now settled down in her living room, late at night, with a couple of best friends, Del (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) and Luz (Briana Kennedy), who are sharing stories about club life. Hope, sitting apart from the others, a glass of whiskey in hand, recounts the time when Mac came back with a broken ankle. One of the friends suggests she busted it on a stairs, but Hope sets her right by explaining that Mac broke it because Rosa and made her wear heels to her cousin’s wedding. “Heels, a dress, make-up, all that shit. She was humiliated. And so she got wasted at the reception just to get through the night. And then she fell and busted up her ankle.”

    Suddenly, one of the friends decides that she cannot let things happen as they are planned, demanding the others just trust her: “Go put your shoes on.”

    Within minutes they are in a car with Hope in the back seat not at all sure she wants to be involved in their vague plot. One of them goes to Hope, demanding she join them, “Come on, Hope, we got to make this right.”

    Hope is not at all clear about what they are talking about or planning.

    They drive to the funeral home, the two friends rushing off and easily breaking into the place. When Hope perceives what they’re planning, she is horrified, demanding they leave immediately. She wants no part of their lunatic actions.

    But the two women exit the car and move quickly to the back door of the funeral house.

    Hope sits frozen in horror as she awaits their return, in the interim, taking out her turquoise and silver wedding ring and putting it back on her finger, recalling her wedding to Mac.

  Soon the women rush back to the car, having successfully broken into the freezer room where Mac’s body lies in wait, dressed in the costume her mother has purchased. They plan to return when they gather their wits and rethink their strategy; but at this point Hope takes over, leaving the others behind.

   She too breaks in and gathers up her fortitude to face her dead friend who she encounters lying on a table with long hair and that dreadful dress Rosa has determined she should wear. Her first words are “Oh baby, what have they done?”

    She grabs a paper towel and gently wipes away the makeup and lipstick. She pulls off the hair extensions. And slowly turning the corpse on its side, she unzips the purple dress, removing it from the dead body, heaving in heavy sighs of sorrow and yet relief in her acts.

    She unzips her bag, and carefully takes out the white shirt, tie, and suit coat in which Mac was dressed for their marriage. We see images of the couple and finally realize that Mac was a butch Latina with short hair who preferred male clothing.

    Hope slips her wedding ring on her finger and leaves the place, purple dress in hand. This time they had her the keys as she slips into the driver’s sea. “How did it go?” asks Luz. Hope turns to her with a huge grin on her face as they drive off.

    The body now resembles the woman who once inhabited it.

 

Los Angeles, December 16, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).