I saw "Llamas contra el viento" possibly at 5 years old. I remember watching it at the Tropical theater in Panamá, with my mother. The Tropical was located in the heart of the city, it was a first-run movie house, specialized in Latin American movies, and many stars of the day, as Libertad Lamarque and Pedro Infante, performed there. I never forgot the movie, but, until yesterday when I saw it again, I realized that the impression I kept, that three flight attendants spent the whole plot traveling throughout South America, was false, since they only go to four countries, in well-used locations, it must be said.
The plot is nothing special, although the credits indicate that it is inspired by the poem "Song of Deep Love" by the Colombian writer Porfirio Barba Jacob, who lived and died in Mexico. Nothing in the film suggests the author's homosexuality, unless we speculate that he was camouflaged in the three Mexican women's personalities: sisters Alicia and Claudia, and their young and screwball friend Laura, who is addicted to Barba Jacob's poetry. They decide to spend their savings on a vacation in Caracas to perhaps find love, fortune and fun. Claudia (Yolanda Varela) is the first to connect with William, a rich, mature and seductive Venezuelan (Víctor Junco); Laura (Anabelle Gutiérrez) falls for Alfonso (Félix González), a Colombian bartender posing as a poet; and Alicia (Ariadne Welter) is courted by Eugenio (Raúl Ramírez), a married Panamanian.
Claudia agrees to take a trip to Havana with William, where she rejects his sexual advances and feels attracted to Gustavo (Fernando Casanova), a young Cuban sailor. For her part, Alicia goes to Panamá, invited by Cristina (Magda Guzmán), Eugenio's sick wife; and in Caracas, Laura breaks up with Alfonso when she discovers that he is not a poet. Meeting again in Caracas, the three women decide to return to Mexico, but are forced to stop over in Cartagena de Indias, where the sentimental "conflicts" are resolved.
In all four countries there is a place for music: in Cuba the Servando Díaz Trio enlivens a birthday party; in Panama, while Alicia waits for Eugenio's wife to pick her up at the Panama Hilton hotel, she watches a show of folk music and dancers by the Leonidas Cajar Group; and in Cartagena, the women join the carnival festivities and watch dances performed by Delia Zapata Olivella's Group. In the Panamanian sequence, it is interesting that the dramatic dialogue between Alicia and Cristina was filmed in the Panama Canal, on the swing bridge close to the Miraflores locks, which opens and closes in front of them during the scene, without security measures, only with the confidence that neither Welter nor Guzmán would have the impulse to jump into the Canal.
As is common in past and present syrupy romantic comedies, the savings are limitless: wherever the women go, they stay in the most expensive hotels, dress with distinction, drink and eat like a queen. If the script is basic, the director Emilio Gómez Muriel does not enhance the situation either. After making a promising debut with "Redes", he gave in to the industrial film routine and seldom returned to the social vein of his debut, such as "Simitrio", for which he was awarded in the San Sebastián film festival. But the rest of his work was made up of films that, although they were type A industrial products, have no greater appeal, like this one, in fact, which is only interesting to a few Venezuelans, Cubans, Panamanians or Colombians, just because their capital cities were locations where it was shot.
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