This story follows Rosario and her son Carlitos. Rosario is a single mother who has illegally immigrated to the U.S. and is now working there as a nanny and housekeeper for rich Americans. Her nine-year-old son Carlitos is still in Mexico, being raised by his grandmother; he and Rosario have not seen each other for four years, though they speak on the phone every Sunday at 10:00 am. Rosario is working hard in order to become legal and bring her son to L.A. to be with her. Carlitos cannot understand why he can’t be with her right away.

When his grandmother dies, Carlitos makes the bold decision to enter the U.S. and find his mother. He hopes to reach her before the following Sunday – that way she won’t know what he is doing and worry about him. Carlitos joins up with two Americans who help smuggle him across the border. However, their car is towed right after crossing the border, and so Carlitos is forced to sneak away and set out on his own. He ends up with another set of illegal Mexican immigrants and goes with them to work picking tomatoes. However, immigration police raid the place and only Carlitos and a man named Enrique manage to hide and thus escape.

Enrique is a drifter – he now sets out to find his next job. He doesn’t want to help Carlitos, but the boy tags along with him. They end up in Tucson, where Carlitos gets them both a job at a restaurant – his goal is to make enough money to buy a bus ticket to L.A. Carlitos mentions to Enrique that his father is in Tucson: Enrique helps him get in touch with his father. Carlitos meets with his father and convinces him to take him to L.A. – however, when the time comes to pick him up from the restaurant, his father does not come. Enrique decides to take Carlitos himself, and so they board a bus for L.A.

Meanwhile, Rosario, desperate to find a way to become legal and be reunited with her son, is finally convinced to marry Paco, a security guard who is in love with her. At the last moment, before the ceremony, she decides that she can’t go through with it. Then she receives a phone call from Mexico, from Carmen, the woman for whom Carlitos had been working. Carmen tells her that Carlitos has gone missing and is trying to cross the border. Frantic with worry Rosario plans to return to Mexico to find her son.

Having reached L.A. on Saturday, Enrique and Carlitos discover that the address which Carlitos has for Rosario is a post office box – they have no way to find her. Carlitos then remembers that Rosario had frequently described the street corner where she would call him from a pay phone. Carlitos and Enrique spend the entire day trying to find the street corner, but they are unable to find it. They spend the night on a park bench, with Enrique promising that they will be up first thing in the morning to keep looking. However, the next morning, they are accosted by police officers. Enrique distracts them and is arrested, allowing Carlitos to escape.

Carlitos finally finds the street corner with the pay phone, where he sees Rosario. Just before boarding the bus to Mexico, she had remembered the Sunday phone call, and realized that Carlitos would be heading for that corner. The movie ends with their meeting.

Under the Same Moon is a simple, sweet story about the love between a mother and her son and the lengths to which each will go to be reunited. The context shows the difficulties of the experience on the American/Mexican border. The difficulties of life in Mexico lead some Mexicans to seek a better life for themselves and for their children north of the border. However, it is difficult to get papers to immigrate, so there are many illegal immigrants who try to get across the border to find work. The tomato pickers are examples of these, as well as Rosario and Licha who are nannies and housecleaners. The American citizens are willing to use the cheap labour, but the American authorities are on the lookout and will even use brutal methods on illegals (such as the raid on the tomato farm). Life is precarious for such illegals, as we see when Rosario is fired. Also, how much she has to work just to get enough to pay for a lawyer to help her become legal and bring Carlitos over. She got only $53 dollars for making a dress for a girl. Licha puts this in perspective: to get to the $4000 needed to pay a lawyer, Rosario needs to make 48 more dresses to increase her savings from $2300 to $4000.

Carlitos feels abandoned – for him, the issue is very clear right from the start. He wants to be with his mother, and he cannot understand why they can’t be together. The sacrifices she is making for his sake are not clear to him – all he knows is that they are keeping him away from her. He even begins to wonder if she doesn’t want him anymore, or that she will forget about him. His sense of rejection deepens once he finds his father. In an incredibly moving scene, he tries to convince his father that they can become a family again. This is what Carlitos wants – to be a family. Sadly, however, his father is too much of a coward.

Although the key relationship in the film is that between Rosario and Carlitos, there is also another important relationship – that of Carlitos and Enrique. Enrique is a man who is ground down by life – he belongs to nobody, nobody belongs to him. He is a sour, bitter man, who initially refuses to help Carlitos. However, little by little, his journey with Carlitos changes him, to the point that he is finally willing to help Carlitos reach L.A. Ultimately, he is even willing to be arrested and deported to help Carlitos reconnect with his mother.

What is it that brings Enrique to this point? Carlitos is the catalyst – Enrique is moved by Carlitos’ determination to be reunited with his mother. Further, Carlitos responds to Enrique’s rude rebuffs with kindness, making sure he gets Enrique a job at the restaurant along with himself. Enrique’s heart begins to soften as he sees Carlitos’ struggles to get home, especially once Carlitos is rejected by his father.

Because Carlitos helps Enrique to change, Enrique then becomes able to help Carlitos. The burning question for Carlitos has always been: “Why?” Why has my mother abandoned me? Why haven’t I seen her in four years? Why don’t my parents want to be with me? Enrique puts his finger on it with his outburst on the bus: “What do you mean, ‘why’? So you could have a better life. You ungrateful brat! Tell me how you’ve liked these past few days. You liked picking tomatoes? Hiding from the INS.? Eh? Or washing dishes just for a meal and a place to sleep? No one chooses to live this way, Carlitos, unless they’ve got a good reason. I’m sure that for her, you’re that reason!”

This is the key, which was so hard for Carlitos to grasp – his mother is doing these things out of love for him, so that he can have a better life. What is crucial for the movie, however, is that Rosario herself comes to realize that this is not enough. Rosario’s goal is to provide a better life for herself and her son, but eventually she realizes that what she really wants, indeed what they both really need, is to be together. Four years apart is not worth it if they aren’t together; the better life is not worth pursuing if its pursuit means being apart. This better life is also not worth the sacrifice of marrying a man she does not love simply to become legal. At the end of the day, Rosario comes to realize that what is most important to herself and to Carlitos is that they be together, whether it is in the ‘better life’ of America or back in Mexico.

Hence, through the course of the movie, all three of the main characters come to important realizations. For Enrique, he is given the chance to reach out beyond himself for a change, to act selflessly. This opportunity, provided for him through his relationship with Carlitos, is his redemption. For Carlitos, he comes to understand at a deeper level how much his mother loves him – he sets out with ever deepening doubts, feeling abandoned, but is helped by Enrique to understand that his mother has always acted with his interests at heart. And finally Rosario realizes that her efforts to make a better life for her son are not what are most important – what matters is that they are together. Appropriately, then, the movie ends right at that crucial moment, when they are together. What does the future hold for them? We don’t know. But whatever it is, they will encounter it together.

Questions

1.   The movie has three main characters – Rosario, Carlitos, and Enrique. By the end of the movie, each of them has changed in some important way. Describe their situation at the beginning of the movie, then by the end. What has changed? How have they changed?

2. What does the movie have to say about the importance of love?

Under the Same Moon. (2007). The Movie Database (TMDb). https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/15013-under-the-same-moon