La ilegal

The film has been criticized as a "telenovela".^[4][5]

In Cinema of Solitude: A Critical Study of Mexican Film, 1967-1983, Charles Ramírez Berg called the film "evidently a quick-and-dirty commercial outing—a good indicator of the kind of work Nuevo Cine auteurs were forced to accept during the López Portillo sexenio."^[6] Ramírez Berg pointed out that in the film,“ "Claudia is exploited not by evil gringos, but by other Mexicans. [...] Impregnated and then duped into coming to the United States by a Mexican man who abandons her and steals her child, she is then violated and shamed by his Mexican wife, which leads to her deportation. Reentering the United States, despicable coyotes (Mexicans who help other Mexicans cross the border for a fee) try to force her into having sex with them. Most wetback films are cautionary tales about the dangers of traveling north; La ilegal, in contrast, depicts Mexicans' betrayal of one another."^[6] Ramírez Berg also points out with respect to the end of the film, in which the Mexican consul helps Claudia to recover her baby, that while it "provides a hopeful alternative (Mexicans helping each other)", "the film's inner contradictions mount up and reverse the implication of much of what the film has exposed", saying that "the consul's deus ex machina heroics effectively stand the film's critique on its head. Mexicans are not compromised by the failures of their own system but by el norte, which contaminates all who came into contact with it," and thus "La ilegal gets the Mexican state off scot-free. Only those who—like the consul—maintain their loyalty to Mexico will remain impervious to the evils of the United States. By again externalizing the problem and ignoring the state's culpability, La ilegal becomes yet another system-affirming fantasy."^[6]

• La ilegal at IMDb