Gael Garcia Bernal can carry a film on his own but he doesn’t need to in Even the Rain because every actor and every scene succeed on their own merits. A Spanish production, Even the Rain (También la lluvia) starts with Bernal (and other European-looking Latinos) in Bolivia on what appears to be a medical mission to a poverty stricken village.

One flying cross later it’s revealed that they are actually there casting for a movie about Columbus in America and the villagers have the ethnic look the producers want to play Indians. Immediately Bernal, playing the director, comes into conflict with the producer over whether to send half the people away as the line stretches the length of a football field. More conflicts emerge in the thematic exploitation of the natives by both the filmmakers as well as an international business consortium that has used the country’s military to privatize the native’s water supply and place it under their corporate care.

One of the natives cast in a minor yet important role, mainly because of his aquiline facial features, is also active in the protest against the oppression. Soon allegiances change among the crew. A general sense of anarchy seems to pervade the second and third acts of Even the Rain, even as revolution takes to the streets and people start dying. Even the actors are scared and demand to be protected.

Even the Rain constantly ups the tension level and takes its character arcs seriously. The film opened in Spain earlier this year, but the scenes of public protest that form part of the plot look like they were ripped out of yesterday’s newscast. Even the Rain opens exclusively at the River Oaks Three this weekend.

- Michael Bergeron