Corina is a young aspiring writer living in Guadalajara with the whole world before her. Removing the word “whole” reveals the true Corina staring back at you in her tiny, comfortable world. You see, she is, in fact, a very talented writer, yet she also has agoraphobia. Her entire world is enveloped into a few city blocks in Mexico, which she never leaves. The young Corina of Guadalajara doesn’t even cross the street.
She works for a publishing house and has the talent but lacks the confidence to pursue her dream of becoming a writer for the publication. Instead, she is assigned a task that she only received as a favor to her family. Her decision to remain overlooked and sidelined at work benefits her in many ways. She gets to just exist.
Unfortunately, her anxiety is consistently winning the fight—the fight to stay alive, to be a fly on the wall, to remain someone who can be easily forgotten once they leave the room—something that Corina does easily so that she may survive in this dangerous world- a world she truly wants to avoid.
Femme Representation
Corina was written by Samuel Sosa and Urzula Barba Hopfner and directed by Urzula Barba Hopfner. The story was inspired by Director Hopfner’s experiences when she lived abroad. She used that to create a story and develop a character that we can understand and connect with in our own unique ways.
The character Corina is played by Naian González Norvind, who offers a timid yet strong presence when faced with her own mistakes. She portrays a character who has lost a parent and is then forced to raise her other parent. González Norvind captures the character’s nuances exceptionally well throughout the film.
A New Adventure
Corina makes a career-ending mistake, which forces her to travel with new people into new surroundings. She struggles with agoraphobia, and her whole world is confined to just a few very familiar city blocks in Mexico. 1, 2, 3…she goes as she counts her steps. 4, 5, 6…and of course she never travels outside the city. This journey she must take on is beyond anything she’s ever experienced or encountered
With her agoraphobia, you could say Corina struggles, but is she struggling? She has found a way not just to survive but to live a cozy little existence. Does she want more? I never get the sense that she truly wants more than writing for the publication she works for. She never lets on that she wants to become famous or make money. To me, at least, she appears just to want to write as a career. Corina wants to do the thing that she truly enjoys, that she loves
I don’t say all this in any way to try to romanticize what is, for many, a mental health crisis. Instead, I speak to Corina’s specific character. She lets on that perhaps there are things she longs for in life. Maybe the adventure of crossing the street with a friend or trying a different food. I also feel that Corina is content being just a writer and not having all eyes on her or her work. She just wants to write like her father did, because she enjoys it.
Corina’s World
Each morning, Corina walks to work, stopping by the same bakery, where she gets her coffee topped off, the exact same way, by what one might call a friend. Corina certainly wouldn’t. The young owner who greets Corina every morning is not only an empathetic acquaintance in her story but also a helper along her journey. It is this budding non-friendship that actually helps Corina while trying to save her job.
Throughout the movie, we never see Corina do anything or change in any radical ways against what she truly wants to do. If Corina always wanted chicharrones and she finally got to try them, then the story got its happy ending. That’s what I loved about the movie. The story stayed true to what we imagined and saw Corina’s character to be. If Corina wanted to fix her mistakes and become a writer, then that is what she would try to do. That is the path we’d hope we’d all take, wouldn’t it be? The one we chose?
