Betty la Flaca
2006 · 7m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Hugo Perez
Tones: darkly comic, provocative
Betty la Flaca may as well not exist given the lack of attention she receives from men, including her boyfriend Carlos; her workmate Reina recommends she strive to enlarge the most important part of the body — her buttocks — and when Betty arrives at María Dolores's 'clinic' in the Bronx, she has no idea how much impact a little 'work' will have on her life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A body-horror comedy wrapped in neorealist texture that refuses to wink—it's genuinely unsettling how the film plays the premise straight, turning what could've been a cheap joke into something that actually interrogates desire and invisibility in ways that make you uncomfortable rather than entertained.
Perez situates this squarely in the tradition of Latin American social realism, but the tonal precision—balancing dark comedy against real stakes—shows a director in conversation with films like *Pixote* and *City of God*, though the formal restraint occasionally yields to the sensationalism of its own premise.
The masterstroke is the sound design around Betty's post-procedure life: the ambient shift in how men respond to her isn't shown through male gaze shots but through *audio cues*, a small technical choice that reframes the entire film's commentary from visual spectacle into acoustic recognition.