Use of Tropes: The Curse of La Patasola

So, when a film has in its blurb “…haunted by La Patasola, a famed vampiric monster from Amazonian folklore…” I honestly didn’t think I’d be writing a Use of Tropes article rather than a review. However, there is blessed little vampiric in AJ Jones’ 2022 movie. Normally I turn to Bane for comparative vampire legends but La Patasola does not appear in her book – however she is listed in Jane Alexander’s The Mind Body Spirit Miscellany, which says: “‘One Foot.’ Beautiful, often familiar-looking woman who reveals her true monstrous one-legged form after a time, sucking her victims’ blood or devouring their flesh.”

Colombian tryst

The film starts with a scene in 19th Century Colombia, where a man (Jack Young) and a woman (Daniela Gonzalez) run to have a tryst. She has second thoughts for a moment – she is married – but he kisses her and then they hear something in the forest. He goes to investigate and we hear him scream and yell for her to run…

Sarah, James and Daniel

In the modern day USA we see a pickup truck. The driver Daniel (AJ Jones, Lovecraft Country) is arguing with Naomi (Najah Bradley), the new girlfriend of his friend James (Patrick R. Walker). The issue between the two is that she is a feminist and he is an embodiment of fragile male privilege. Honestly, there is nothing likable about the character and, as the film goes on, he doesn’t improve. His wife, Sarah (Gillie Jones), seems long suffering and we get a sense of his fragility when he talks about the role of man being the provider and Naomi asks what he does for work – as the film develops we discover Sarah supports him (unable to follow her dream of going to nursing school as she has to work) whilst he tries to get his business off the ground – he’s been doing that for five years.

Naomi and James

They are flagged down by a park ranger (Mark Pettit) and this is the stereotypical warning for the kids going into the woods but as we’ll see the warning is superfluous. Rather it is for Naomi to complain about the way Daniel interacted with authority, whilst he had black people in the car. Anyhoo, they get to Bear Lake, set up camp and tell ghost stories. Even in this, Naomi and Daniel antagonise each other. Naomi tells a story her Colombian grandmother used to tell about La Patasola (Luciana Faulhaber) – one-legged – who was a beautiful woman who cheated on her husband, for which he killed her and chopped a leg off in the process.

La Patasola appears

She won’t say the creature’s name as it summons her – which causes Daniel to call her bravery into doubt – so she speaks the name… and this makes the ranger, in the normal use of the trope, superfluous as he is meant to foreshadow the trouble by referencing the dangers and they were not there until Naomi named them… the creature being summoned after meeting him (though in the exchange with the ranger, Daniel mentioned having a flare gun, which lets us know he has one and fire kills the creature). La Patasola punishes the unfaithful (and it is suggested that the pure cannot see her, though this does not seem to be the case).

Sarah and Naomi

So… James wants to propose… Naomi wants to finish the relationship… Sarah is dissatisfied with both the home situation and Daniel’s attitude… Daniel is a dick… Everything falls apart and there are sparks between Daniel and Naomi that leads to an illicit kiss (though the idea that Naomi would go for Daniel stretches credulity). La Patasola is haunting the woods and… well for ages not much happens and when it does there is little in the way of atmosphere and nothing that resembles vampirism. Worse, when we see her in her full monster form it is a blooming awful construct that is pure creature feature – so why the Use of Tropes?

monstrous form

It centres on her backstory – the fact is that several cultures have a version of myth that Others women and makes them monstrous, and whilst often this is the hag (ie. The woman who is of no more use to the patriarchy due to their lack of fertility), it is also often the beautiful young woman who perhaps loses their child (fails in their imposed role of incubator), attacks other children (anti-maternal) or, in this case, enforces her body autonomy against the wishes of her husband. (Note, whilst the myth talks about unfaithfulness it is the unfaithful woman who is punished by being transformed into the monstrous and not the man). Much like the penangglan or the legend of Lilith this is the Othering of the female, and that is the trope – it would have been nice if the film had actually had more (or anything) vampiric but the connection to the vampire myth is mentioned during Naomi’s story.

The imdb page is here.