'Same Moon,' Seen From Cloud Nine

NEW YORK -- These unforgiving days, when a Mexican immigrant's dream may founder in the desert or a day-labor line, Patricia Riggen can deal with the surreal sweatshop to which hers has led this afternoon: A so-hip-it-hurts Times Square hotel, with an entrance like an underwater grotto, soft lights, groovy porn-movie-style music in every public space and a concierge desk labeled "Whatever."

"It's not what I like to do, but I recognize how important it is for the movie," Riggen says.

Ah, it's all for the project, the work, the cause. Don't they all say that? But actually, Riggen is fresh and new enough at this that her earnestness sounds genuine. The director's first feature film sparked a studio bidding war at Sundance last year and is about to open across the country.

It's called "Under the Same Moon," a sentimental tale about a single Mexican mom who made the painful choice to leave her son behind to work illegally in Los Angeles as a housekeeper. She sends $300 home every month, and every Sunday at 10 a.m. they speak -- from a pay phone on an East Los Angeles corner to a pay phone in a poor Mexican town. The mostly Spanish-language film follows the 9-year-old boy as he undertakes an improbable odyssey across the border to attempt a reunion.

Groan ! Not another bleak immigration film! No, in fact, no indeed, not this one -- though Riggen did have to assure even some actors of that when she was recruiting a cast. Referring to the iconic, standard-setting "El Norte" of 1983 -- in which the Guatemalan characters cross from misery to misery -- Riggen says, "We are ready for the opposite of 'El Norte' right now. This is that."

By which she means something warmer and, yes, a little sappier, if still anguished in parts. "Moon" feels like "El Norte" meets "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" meets "Finding Nemo." All pluck and luck and mother love.

"Simple, lighthearted, heartwarming" is how Riggen describes her film, which opens Wednesday in Washington. "It tries to be meaningful, but it is full of light, not of darkness. Which is something that I may be criticized for, you know, because immigration is a complex subject matter, and some people are going to want to see the complexity and the terrible situation. Okay, fine. But you know, this is a movie, and it's not a political essay, and I am like this: I like to show the good nature of people and the good side of things. I think we are ready to see the other side of the coin, the human side."

Variety's somewhat mixed review described "Moon" as: "Wrapping the political hot potato of illegal immigration in the sentimental balm of a mother-son . . . drama."

Given the film's blend of crafted storytelling, political timeliness -- and potential controversy -- plus old-fashioned tear-jerking, the two companies releasing "Moon," Fox Searchlight Pictures and the Weinstein Co., say they are attempting the unusual trick of wooing both the English-speaking art-house audience and the mass Latino audience. (Called "La Misma Luna" in Spanish, the film has English subtitles and some English dialogue.)

It's all new to Riggen -- the whirring wheels of studio buzz-making machinery, the multiple interviews, the posing under white lights in a black shawl like a model in those women's magazines she says she never read as a girl growing up in Guadalajara.

At 37, she can still access the emotion of amazement. "It's all a game, a serious game, but a game after all," she says, recalling that strange and thrilling -- and "so much fun"-- night at Sundance in 2007 when executives from several competing studios prowled her sales rep's rented condo like hungry predators. "Seriously, they were circling with the car around the condo, and storming in and opening doors and spying, to listen to what's going on. Had we made a deal or not? Just a very beautiful night," she remembers.

The bargaining continued from midnight until dawn for the chance to distribute her debut effort. Eventually, Fox Searchlight and Weinstein paid $5 million -- not bad for an indie film, in Spanish, with no big American stars, except a brief turn by America Ferrera ("Ugly Betty") as a clumsy immigrant-smuggling coyote.