I must confess that I really never expected to see a jungle drama from master surrealist Luis Buñuel. As it turns out, Senior Buñuel did make such a film in 1956, somewhere during his minimalist Mexican period. Although it is not as bizarrely outrageous as some of the filmmaker’s earlier or later works, Death In The Garden (La Mort En Ce Jardin) is still worth a look-see, especially for Buñuel fans.
We open in an unnamed South American village, wherein local diamond miners are all given a bad break of news. It seems that the government has gotten wise to the fact that diamonds = money, and so they tell all the miners to piss off immediately — all of the country’s minerals belong to the state. While the rest of the miners (one of whom is played by The Aztec Mummy’s Luis Aceves Castañeda) are intent on starting a revolution, a foolish old man (Charles Vanel) is determined to take his deaf-mute daughter (Michèle Girardon) back to France, along with the village prostitute (Simone Signoret, a year after Les Diaboliques, which also featured Vanel), whom he has fallen madly in love with.
Thrust into the mix is a foreigner (Georges Marchal), who is almost immediately robbed by the town’s corrupt officials and tossed into a cell for a crime he did not commit (lesson: don’t venture past Mexico if you’re white). Escaping prison with the unwilling aid of a priest (Michel Piccoli), the foreigner is more than happy to help the miners start a rebellion. When the unruly fun soon comes to an end, the foreigner and the old man wind up with bounties on their heads. And so, they make a break for Brazil via the river, with the priest, the prostitute, and the old man’s daughter in two. Of course, fate is unwilling to help them in any way, and a patrol boat forces them to hightail it into the jungle, where the second (and most dangerous) half of their adventure awaits.
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