The first contact points that Gabriela has with others’ and her own sexuality are traumatising and quintessential for her behaviour and her choices. Her sexuality is inflicted upon her, taught, absorbed by her, a twisted deforming thing that rots as it grows. Beautified and trivialised through an abusive use of language.
The forced awakening through alien hands. The theft of Gabriela’s boundaries. Every single bodily sensation from girlhood to womanhood is attached to challenging turning points and emotions in her life. Nothing becomes more important to her than breaking the chain of repetition.
She looks at her mother, having gone through her, having existed inside of her, having shared her body and now observing it, Gabriela becomes sure that that is not her. And yet, despite ruling out her mother as a frame of reference, she is staring into a void, a lack of female characters to look up to and identify herself with. No matter how much she fights against the presence of her mother in her life, she ends up measuring herself up against Estefania who does everything in her power to not become absent. And the mirror-image changes.
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Croque-Melpomene 