Last week I caught the Spanish-Mexican co-production La Zona, directed by Rodrigo Plá, which is currently in theatrical release in Brazil. I have to say, the film surpassed my expectations. I thought it would be the frustrating type of movie that starts out as a social critique but ends up becoming a messy Hollywood-wannabe-thriller that doesn't have the guts to truly finish what it started. I was pleased to find that the plot does get messy - but in a good way, sustaining its unflinching look at ugly realities while swiftly moving the story forward to some unexpected places.

La Zona takes place in a wealthy gated community in Mexico City that could easily double for an exclusive neighborhood in São Paulo. One night three boys enter this community for petty theft, but things get out of control and one of the residents gets killed. Two of the boys are found and killed, but the third stays hidden and is unable to escape the neighborhood without getting caught by homeowners hungry for "justice." Meanwhile, community leaders make every attempt to keep the police away from the scene of the crime for fear of losing control of their privileged area. Wrought with tension, La Zona has a killer premise that exposes some serious social divisions.

I have to admit that one of my motives for seeing this movie is Maribel Verdú. She doesn't even get that much screen time in La Zona but she's one of those actresses who just appeals to me - I think it has something to do with her Spanish (ie, from Spain) accent and the fact that she's somehow intimidating in every role I remember her in.

I caught Rachel Boynton's compelling Our Brand Is Crisis, which is playing in Brazilian theaters, this weekend. (One of the region's political scandals of 2006 has been Bolivian president Evo Morales' nationalization of the gas industry, which is clearly a response to former president to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Goni)'s disastrous presidency, so the film feels very relevant for Brazilian audiences.) Boynton does an excellent job of explaining the politics that led the country to the point of collapse.

Our Brand Is Crisis follows the team of American consultants that Goni hired to market him as the solution to the Bolivian electorate's long list of problems, ie, to win the presidential election. The marketers, doing what marketing does so well, create a fantasy message through simplicity and repitition (and a bunch of focus groups) that Goni is the man that Bolivians want. It's never made clear why Goni wants to be president (besides satisfying his ego), but that's irrelevant to the marketing strategy. Their goal, which they achieve, is to convince buyers (the voters) that their product (Goni) is the answer to their problems.

The difference between politics and consumer marketing is that nobody riots and kills (as some Bolivians did when it became clear that they had been lied to) when they discover that a product they bought for $5 is not, in fact, all it's cracked up to be. They just buy a different brand next time and no harm is done. But by selling impossible promises of instant gratification to a country with very serious problems, the consequences are far more grave. It's politics with an unabashed capitalistic approach to gain profits and market share at whatever cost.

"Our Brand Is Crisis" shows that the strategy is dangerous. These pundits create a brand of crisis without seeming to understand that a crisis is painful, important, difficult. (Is there such a thing as an easy crisis?) But a brand is the opposite: it's instant, gratifying, simple. By reducing crisis to a soundbyte, they strip it of any of the complexities that made it important in the first place. And by creating the fantasy that a crisis is simple, they create the impression that the answer is equally so. That is where the danger lies.

What's amazing to watch in "Our Brand Is Crisis" is that everyone works under the naive assumption that American politics are worth exporting, which in itself is a subject worth plenty of debate.