La Usurpadora

There's one rule behind the songs in 'La Usurpadora': every one of them had to be a Latin hit from the Nineties, the decade when the original telenovela made Gabriela Spanic a star across more than 125 countries. Inés Rodena's story of two identical women, told on television many times over, reaches the cinema as a bilingual musical.

Victoria (Isabella Castillo) has told her husband she's checking into rehab. She's actually in Las Vegas with her lover, Chad (Shane West). At the hotel she runs into Valeria, an employee who looks exactly like her and can't afford her grandmother's medical treatment. With a mix of blackmail and money, Victoria talks her into taking her place in Mexico. Neither of them knows they're twins separated at birth.

After a trip to the salon, Valeria lands in Jalisco as the wife of Carlos Daniel (Alan Estrada), with two children to look after. Everyone's struck by how kind Victoria has suddenly become, and her mother-in-law, Doña Inés (Susana Zabaleta), isn't buying it. While the real Victoria enjoys her freedom, the stand-in wins everyone over and throws herself into saving the family's tequila business. How long can she keep it up?

The soundtrack runs through 'La vida es un carnaval', 'Mi tierra', 'Bidi Bidi Bom Bom', 'Dame otro tequila' and 'Vuelve', rearranged by Sebastian Krys, who'd worked as an assistant on some of the original recordings. Dialogue and lyrics switch between Spanish and English, and the nods to the genre keep coming: the characters watch telenovelas on TV, and Spanic herself turns up in a cameo. Critics were split: some loved its affection for the genre, others found the numbers uneven and the villain underused.

Santiago Limón, who co-directed 'Cindy la regia', directs from a script he wrote with María Hinojos. Jesús Ochoa, Cecilia Toussaint, Alejandra Ley and drag queen Valentina are also in the cast, with Alejandra Guzmán in a brief appearance. Shooting began in December 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, across Mexico City, Hidalgo, Jalisco and Nayarit, with more than 200 dancers choreographed by Priscilla Hernández, who staged the Day of the Dead parade in 'Spectre'. It opened in the US on 7 April 2023 and in Mexico five days later, before moving to ViX in June.

• Music
• Comedy
• Drama